Camera multiplexor crazy idea

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JustSomeGuyTN
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Joined: Thu Apr 25, 2019 7:53 pm

Camera multiplexor crazy idea

Post by JustSomeGuyTN »

So I came across this board

https://www.tindie.com/products/ivmech/ ... ltiplexer/

My understanding is that this basically turns multiple cameras into one signal for the raspberry pie. So here's what I'm wondering. Could I use two of these to combine a noIR camera with a regular raspberry pi camera for each input on the StereoPi to have a color night vision or something similar.

stereomaton
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Joined: Tue May 21, 2019 12:33 pm
Location: France

Re: Camera multiplexor crazy idea

Post by stereomaton »

Woow, it looks mega expansive for the task; but I might have not understood the whole thing.
If you can switch between two kind of cameras, you can profit from them. However, I suspect you will have to stop and start for the switch to work (and perhaps reboot, depending on how initialization is done)

Furthermore I do not know how these IR camera work, but I suspect that high additional IR light is needed for the sensor to see something in night vision (like on old tape cameras) except if the led is already on the camera module. Some IR cameras work without led, but those are more likely called thermal cameras.

By the way it might be a nice project.
Stereophotographer and hacker
Despite my quite active participation in the forum, I am not in the StereoPi team
StereoPi (v1) Standard Edition + CM3Lite module + a few cameras

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Realizator
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Re: Camera multiplexor crazy idea

Post by Realizator »

JustSomeGuyTN, I know this multiplexor project, and it can be useful for some specific cases. You can find their software implementation guide here: https://github.com/ivmech/ivport-v2
As you might see, you'll need to do a serious coding work, and take into account StereoPi specific.

As for your noIR and regular camera combination with this multiplexor, it can work, but you may face 2 issues:
1. It might be difficult to obtain hi-res and hi-quality video, but might work with still images.
2. You can not do axis of both cameras absolutely coinciding, so while combining noIR and reg camera images you will have a problem with high-quality images combination. It's like combining left and right image from stereopair.

If I have a task like yours, I'll try to use Pi cameras with noIR, and add motorized IR filter. This way you may have two images from the same camera, one is regular and another one is "night" without IR filter. But, as I mention, you can not obtain 30 FPS with motorized part.

Just a curious, is there any logical paradox in your idea? When light is low, noIR will give you some picture (with external IR light may be, as mentioned by Stereomaton), but color camera will give you dark image without colors. So combining them will not give you required result... Did you plan to use external flash for color images?
Eugene a.k.a. Realizator

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