Rugged RPi Camera case

Wow, what a test subject!

I too had to use the dailymotion link, as the embedding here doesn't work for me either.

Was it deliberately shot with the camera on its side?  I watched it with the sky on the left of the frame.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Was it deliberately shot with the camera on its side?  I watched it with the sky on the left of the frame.

Yep, distance vs the field of view of the standard lens meant it was the only way.  That's widescreen for you too, I'd probably have got about a third of the block being demolished and most of an empty street the other way.  It's also a bit odd.. take a 1920x1080 still image with it and the field of view is different from 1920x1080 video

When I was building the case I gave myself the option to mount the camera either horizontally or vertically anyway, so not a huge problem for other uses

No surprise though that when you look in the camera section of the RPF forum there's lots of people with creative mods to get different / better lenses.

I thought the trashy mirror photo article was good.

Mark

Reminds me of these:

http://www.element14.com/community/blogs/pdp7/2013/05/31/boring-commute-my-favorite-engineering-open-source-podcasts

http://www.element14.com/community/blogs/pdp7/2013/05/24/my-t-shirt-for-this-tgif-spacewar

thankfully he doesn't have the same cleavage.

Because they are a photo, he's allowed the portrait mode.....

coder27 wrote:

 

http://gizmodo.com/5915888/an-important-psa-on-why-you-should-never-shoot-videos-vertically

While I don't disagree on the annoying part, a lot of the rest of that is just nonesense.

Anyway, here's a composite of approximately the same position, one horizontally, one vertically.

So how would you solve that problem ? 

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

The building looks better than half the ones they knocked down in Christchurch, inc a few that they are removing because they don't fit the current plan.

Those weren't in the current plan either, but regardless of how they look, they were plagued with damp due to poor construction. So they skipped the queue and were demolished early.

I like your case and mounting, as my project is to shove it up on the skifield, which obviously has all sorts of unpleasant weather,

Luckily its mainly stills we want to send back over wireless.

It's a challenge to get something that's properly resistant to the elements while at the same time not messing up the images. That case is made of 3mm polycarbonate, and depending on the lighting conditions it becomes more or less obvious that there are distortions.  There's obviously other choices depending on conditions and how good you need the images to be. It was suggested to use a thin glass filter bonded to the outside with a hole cut for the camera, but I simply didn't have a clue what to expect here, so went for the more robust method.

selsinork wrote:

 

You've just invented the ideal format.  It'll take the world by storm !!!!

shhh... you don't want to go giving them any more silly ideas

Mine are much less trashy as I'm holding Linux

Drew

So we replace the white low cut TShirt with one that features Linux ...?

Selsinork

It was suggested to me that a standard outdoor floodlamp makes an ideal rugged holder.

Nice thin glass on the front, a bracket arrangement to mount it, inc adjustment, and fully waterproof to boot.

They come in at least three sizes (150w, 500w and 1000w), with the 150 and 500w being throw away cheap.

You'll need to mount the camera, Pi and anything else, as the front glass folds down.

I'm in two minds for my project due to the cold soak of the metal, which generally attracts more ice than anything else.

Mark

So how would you solve that problem ?

There is nothing worse than chopping the top or bottom of the image off.

Fixed lens, fixed location ... you get what you can.

Your vertical approach was right for the intended use, and fully captured the subject matter.

We can all lay on our sides and watch, or download and rotate it.

Its a cheaper version than a GoPro, so I expect to see more of these appearing now you've started a trend.

Mark

So how would you solve that problem ?

There is nothing worse than chopping the top or bottom of the image off.

Fixed lens, fixed location ... you get what you can.

Your vertical approach was right for the intended use, and fully captured the subject matter.

We can all lay on our sides and watch, or download and rotate it.

Its a cheaper version than a GoPro, so I expect to see more of these appearing now you've started a trend.

Mark

Mark Beckett wrote:

 

Its a cheaper version than a GoPro, so I expect to see more of these appearing now you've started a trend.

It's kind of what I expect to see, there's things you can do with a Pi camera that you'd think twice about risking an expensive camera on. While you can get some really cheap 10Mpxiel point and shoot type cameras, you mostly lose the capabilities to script the control of what it does, so the Pi + Camera can be quite an interesting combination.

selsinork wrote:

 

there's things you can do with a Pi camera that you'd think twice about risking an expensive camera on.

Very true, and it's true for all components, whether they be ARM boards or cameras or absolutely anything else.  The price point makes all the difference in the world when it comes to speculative experimentation.  It's not only that more people can afford it, but also as you noted, that when it's pocket change then you don't feel too bad destroying the item accidentally or putting it at risk by modifying it deliberately for a project.

This is why I'm such a fan of what we've been loosely calling "the Pi niche" of pricing, and why it's so important that other manufacturers are coming onstream to extend the possibilities available to us.

One use for the Pi camera that appeals to me is an HD computerized microscope, as I already have a 14X-60X binocular scope and lots of related optical bits and pieces, and computerizing it would add greatly to its abilities.  Last month there was a nice project described on the Element 14 Pi Blog about linking a Pi camera to a Lensman microscope, and it shows how nice (and useful!) the results can be.

Morgaine.

Indeed I have a nice inspection microscope I could do the same just need to cut a square bit of acrylic to mount the cam to then a sequence of round ones with holes for the lens to adapt to the eyepiece.