Topic: Help explain the data gathering
I'm working in a group to build this scanner, and we have finally built it and got it to perform some pretty good scans! Our design differs slightly because we are doing it for a school project. We wired our own components to a bread board, added a LCD screen so that users don't need an external device, such as a phone/tablet/pc to operate. We also added some functionality such as being able to send the STL file output to an email so that it is easy to 3D print(again we are trying to make it user friendly). However we are having trouble trying to understand how exactly the software works.
Our understanding, so far, is that it takes a 2 pictures, one with the laser on, and one with it off. Since the position of the camera is centered to the middle of the turn table, the laser light is mapped in the software relative to the center. It uses the same pixels where the laser hit, from the image without the line laser, to display the image preview of the scan so far. When the turn table turns and it does the next iteration and adds the data points, next to the previous data points, and repeats for 360 degree view of the object (We feel that this is accurate, we took a scan of a sphere, and unplugged the power to the turn table. It took a scan without rotating the object, and the result looked like a sphere). If there is any flaw in our understanding please correct us. Now some of the things we cant seem to figure out. How does the line laser and camera work together to determine the depth of the object? We are having trouble understanding the code. We're glad it works but we also would like to know why/how. If anyone can give us a mathematical explanation/equations on how this happens it would be greatly appreciated. Or even post a link to a good explanation. Thank you!