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New video: Camera with a software controlled lens (Patreon)

Published:
2024-12-04 14:44:28
Edited:
2024-12-04 14:52:50
Imported:
2026-06

Content

I just wrapped up a project where I build a very strange type of camera. It can only take a photo with one pixel at a time but it can build up complex images by combining a ton of 1 pixel “pictures” that it takes over time. If you’re familiar with software rendering, one way to think about this camera is that it’s a sort of real life ray tracer. 

It may sound kind of silly, but taking pictures in this roundabout way enables the camera to do some really interesting things like emulating lenses that would be impractical or even impossible to fabricate. One neat application of this is to make a virtual lens that can see behind objects. I’m really happy with how this one turned out and the results exceeded my expectations. 

Thank you so much for your support! It enables me to build things like this which I hope that you (and the world) enjoy. I’ll be having a patron livestream in the coming week or so where I go through the video and share more details that didn’t make the final cut. More on that soon!

-Shane

Files

Can we make a camera see behind walls?

Check out https://brilliant.org/StuffMadeHere/ for a free 30-day trial and 20% off your annual premium subscription! Help support these projects on Patreon: https://patreon.com/stuffmadehere Be sure to subscribe if you like this kind of stuff! https://tinyurl.com/sub2smh Sources used in video: - Thomas the tank image by http://www.hitnewsonline.com/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13878653 - Bayer pattern by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Comments

Barry

One of your best, most interesting and entertaining builds!

Andrew P

the goat blessed us again

Erik Berends

Nice! Next possible version: add a distance meter and plot the photo in 3D?

Chris Aardappel

As a video game developer, watching you do physical manipulation of FOV is freakin magical! How do you even come up with a concept like this?

stuffmadehere

Thanks! It was one of those concepts that grew over time. The idea of integrating data across time to make a single pixel camera has been around for a while (decades at least) and building one has been something I've wanted to do ever since I heard of them. At some point I realized this idea was essentially a raytracer which led to me imaginging all sorts of wacky imaging ideas that I could do with such a thing. This included the reverse perspective, etc. Once I had an idea of the kinds of images I'd like to get I was able to design mechanics & optics to achieve it.

Richard Wahl

This is awesome! I designed camera sensors for a living for about 6 years (space, earth, ir, visible). You could also use this camera to see through mesh objects. Next you need to swap out the diode for MgCdTe, throw on a cryo cooler, get a lense you can pull vacuum on then you can literally see through objects (there's a lot of common materials that are transparent to IR). If you want help let me know!