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Panoramic Camera

Views:7226Difficulty: 4 Status: Development

Servo motor, JPEG camera, and Arduino Leonardo combine to make a panoramic camera.

Panoramic Cameras take beautiful pictures! They are great for shooting landscapes, cityscapes, or apartments for rent when you want to show the whole room. In this tutorial we show how to make a DIY Arduino-based panoramic camera. It can save images to an SD card or send them out over the Serial port and USB cable. The camera can be powered by battery or USB. In keeping with our desire to make transparent devices we include a laser-cut plexi glass case for this camera (by the way, it is the same case used in our time-lapse camera project .) We are using the TTL Serial JPEG Camera with NTSC Video from adafruit, ( they also have a weatherproof version ).

Images

Panoramic Camera and Plexi Glass Case

Panoramic Camera and Plexi Glass Case

The panoramic camera in its plexi-glass case.
Pan Camera Head On

As an example of onomatopoetic electronics the panoramic camera is silkscreened with an eye, because this PCB can SEE!
PCB Backside

The back of the panoramic camera's PCB.
Panoramic Camera PCB

The Front of the panoramic camera (pan cam) PCB. Notice the eye, the SD Card where images can be stored, the LED's and the buttons. This circuit is an example of onomatopoetic electronics , because the silkscreen eye indicates the function of the device: to see! (panoramic pictures).
The First Panoramic Picture

This is the first panoramic picture we took with this Arduino-based panoramic camera. Check out the workshop!
Panoramic Sunset

The NYC Skyline at sunset. Just 240 pixels of heights because we were debugging... Higher resolution is possible and forthcoming!
Sunset Panoramic Later

As the night lays down over Bushwick and stretches across Brooklyn.
Pan Across The Room

One fun thing about panoramic pictures is you can be in them many times! Each shot takes at least 5 seconds to save on the SD Card so in that time you can move in the direction the motor rotated the camera and remain in the picture. Notice I'm standing and sitting in this shot!

The panoramic camera in its plexi-glass case.

Video

Video of the Panoramic Camera in Action

The Arduino-based panoramic camera in action!

Interactive

interactive

Links

Panoramic Image Explorer

Panoramic picture texturing a cylinder. Takes a minute to load and requires a webGL enabled browser like Firefox. Press the spacebar to load new images and be patient... 3D over IP is still in its infancy :)

Source Code

Code

Arduino Code for Panoramic Camera

Okay now the basic idea of this code is to fix the camera to the motor, then rotate the motor a little bit, take a picture, then wash, rinse and repeat. So we get a bunch of overlapping shots which we can stitch together (by hand or with software). The crux of the algorithm is the function called take_panoramic_picture() [notice the self-documenting code]. The function takes as input the number of pictures to take, and the number of angles to rotate in total. Even at the lowest resolution setting we found that 8 pictures were enough to fully span the 180 degrees that the servo can rotate. take_panoramic_picture loops takes a picture at each rotation increment and saves them to the SD card with names like pan02.jpg, and pan03.jpg. The function goes like this:

void take_panoramic_picture(int pics, int rotate){  // Create an image with the name panxx.jpg  char filename[13];  strcpy(filename, "pan00.jpg");  int cur_angle = 0;  int angle_inc = rotate/pics;  for (int i = 0; i < pics; i++) {    pan_servo.write(cur_angle);    delay(cur_wait);    filename[3] = '0' + i/10;    filename[4] = '0' + i%10;    take_picture(filename);    delay(cur_wait);    cur_angle += angle_inc;  }   }

Lastly, the library list, we use a ton of Arduino libraries in this code so get ready: Adafruit vc0706 camera library , the SoftwareSerial Library (to talk to the camera), the SD Card library (to save the images), the SPI protocol library (to talk to the SD Card), and lastly the Servo motor library, we need this one to spin the camera around.

Download File

/* Panoramic Camera by LucidTronix * Example pictures, explanation, tutorial at * http://www.lucidtronix.com/tutorials/39 * Uses the vc0706 camera library from adafruit * The camera is fixed to the motor which rotates * and takes a photo every 10 degrees or so. */#include #include #include #include #include  Servo pan_servo;SoftwareSerial cameraconnection = SoftwareSerial(8,9);// pass the serial connection to the camera objectVC0706 cam = VC0706(&cameraconnection);#define SD_CS 4    // Set the chip select line to whatever you use (4 doesnt conflict with the library)int pin_pan = 5;int pin_btn = 10;int pan = 0;unsigned int cur_wait = 500;int leds[] = {A0,A1,A2,A3};void setup() {    Serial.begin(9600);  while (!Serial) {    ; // wait for serial port to connect. Needed for Leonardo only  }  Serial.println("in setup yo.");  delay(1400);  Serial.println("now gonna try");  Serial.println("VC0706 Camera snapshot test");  // Try to locate the camera  if (cam.begin()) {    Serial.println("Camera Found:");  } else {    Serial.println("No camera found?");    return;  }  // Print out the camera version information (optional)  char *reply = cam.getVersion();  if (reply == 0) {    Serial.print("Failed to get version");  } else {    Serial.println("-----------------");    Serial.print(reply);    Serial.println("-----------------");    cam.setImageSize(VC0706_160x120);          // small  }  // Set the picture size - you can choose one of 640x480, 320x240 or 160x120   // Remember that bigger pictures take longer to transmit!    //cam.setImageSize(VC0706_640x480);        // biggest  //cam.setImageSize(VC0706_320x240);        // medium  cam.setImageSize(VC0706_640x480);          // small  // You can read the size back from the camera (optional, but maybe useful?)  uint8_t imgsize = cam.getImageSize();  Serial.print("Image size: ");  if (imgsize == VC0706_640x480) Serial.println("640x480");  if (imgsize == VC0706_320x240) Serial.println("320x240");  if (imgsize == VC0706_160x120) Serial.println("160x120");  pinMode(pin_btn, OUTPUT);   for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++){    pinMode(leds[i], OUTPUT);   }    Serial.println("Trying SD Card..");  pinMode(SD_CS, OUTPUT);  digitalWrite(SD_CS, HIGH);  while (!SD.begin(SD_CS)) {    Serial.println(" no SD card :(");    Serial.println("will try again in 10 seconds..");    delay(10000);  }  Serial.println("SD Card Ready!");  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++){    digitalWrite(leds[i], HIGH);   }  delay(500);  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++){    digitalWrite(leds[i], LOW);   }  delay(500);  pan_servo.attach(pin_pan);  Serial.print("Ready to take image! Press the Button!");}void loop(){  if (digitalRead(pin_btn) == HIGH) {    take_panoramic_picture(8,170);    Serial.print("Pan Image Taken");  }}void take_panoramic_picture(int pics, int rotate){  // Create an image with the name panxx.jpg  char filename[13];  strcpy(filename, "pan00.jpg");  int cur_angle = 0;  int angle_inc = rotate/pics;  for (int i = 0; i < pics; i++) {    pan_servo.write(cur_angle);    delay(cur_wait);    filename[3] = '0' + i/10;    filename[4] = '0' + i%10;    take_picture(filename);    delay(cur_wait);    cur_angle += angle_inc;  }   }void take_picture(char * filename){  Serial.println("Snap in 1 secs...");  delay(1000);  if (! cam.takePicture())     Serial.println("Failed to snap!");  else     Serial.println("Picture taken!");     // Create an image with the name filename    // Open the file for writing      // delete it if it exists     delay(200);    SD.remove(filename) ;    delay(100);       File imgFile = SD.open(filename, FILE_WRITE);    // Get the size of the image (frame) taken     delay(100);       uint16_t jpglen = cam.frameLength();    Serial.print(jpglen, DEC);    Serial.println(" byte image");      pan_servo.detach();    int32_t time = millis();    // Read all the data up to # bytes!    while (jpglen != 0) {      // read 64 bytes at a time;      uint8_t *buffer;      uint8_t bytesToRead = min(32, jpglen);   // change 32 to 64 for a speedup but may not work with all setups!      buffer = cam.readPicture(bytesToRead);      imgFile.write(buffer, bytesToRead);      jpglen -= bytesToRead;    }    imgFile.close();     delay(50);    cam.reset();    pan_servo.attach(pin_pan);}void blink_leds(int wait){  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++){    digitalWrite(leds[i], HIGH);     delay(wait);  }  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++){    digitalWrite(leds[i], LOW);     delay(wait);    }}

Parts

parts

Parts

Title	Description	#	Cost	Link	Picture
TTL Serial JPEG Camera with NTSC Video	Camera from adafruit	1	$39.95	Link
Stepper Motor	BiPolar Stepper motor from sparkfun.	2	$14.95	Link
PCB for SD Card and Camera	PCB supports camera and SD card atmge32u4 and USB.	1	$7.0	Link
ATMEGA32U4-MU	Integrated Circuits MCU AVR 32K FLASH 16MHZ 44-QFNValue:2.7 V ~ 5.5 V 16MHz	1	$6.04	Link
SD Card (micro 4GB)	MicroSD Card 4GB with full-size SD card adapterValue:4GB	1	$5.35	Link
microSD Card Connector	Secure Digital - microSD™ Push In, Push OutValue: microSD	1	$3.44	Link
Battery Holder	Holds 3 AAA Batteries. Has on/off switch.Value:4.6V	1	$1.95	Link
USB connector	USB Mini type BValue:female	1	$0.68	Link
Crystal	CRYSTAL 16.00000 MHZ 20PF SMDValue:16MHz	1	$0.53	Link
Button	Tactile switch SMD SPST 0.05A 12VValue:SPST	3	$0.2	Link
Resistor Array	RES ARRAY 300 OHM 4 RES 1206Value:300	1	$0.02	Link

Comments:

sam

It still in the prototype phase... But we will keep you posted!

Sat, Feb 28 2015 1:01PM

kongkawai

Hi there! When can I buy this product. I have been waiting for long time.

Tue, Dec 30 2014 3:06AM

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