http://www.ivmech.com/magaza/en/develop … exer-p-104

Lasers would be easy with a pole switch between them, and I'm sure the software could be easily tweaked as required.

Maybe an easier solution all round - toying with the idea of getting one as not too dear.

Does it matter what the distance is from the camera to the center of the turntable?  If I put the camera closer, (let's say 9.25" instead of 10.5", and the accounted for this in the setup, would it create any problems.

I wouldn't matter if it was closer, you would just need to update the camera z value on the Setup page.  However, it would matter that the camera is rotating as it is raised.  The camera z distance isn't the distance from the camera to the origin point but is instead the distance from the camera to a ray that goes vertically from the origin.  Another way to think about it is that it's simply the z component of the camera's x,y,z location (since it's always at x=0).  The software currently assumes that the camera is looking straight down the Z direction which wouldn't be the case if it was rotating as it was raised.  However, this is something that I can change if needed.

- Uriah

well thats what they call them. and the line lasers all say how much the lines widen depending on how far they are away from laser. these cheap ones double width every foot about

Not exactly, most inexpensive red lasers have an beam divergence of about 2 mRads.  Assuming you have a 2mm aperture, the beam/dot size at 20 feet is about 14mm.

BTW.  I know what you meant when you said it doubles every foot or so, but you expressed it wrong.  If it doubled in size every foot as you say, a 2mm dot would be 4mm, 8mm, 16mm, 32mm, 64mm, and so on every foot.  At 20 foot distance, would be 2^20=1048576 mm, or more than 1 kilometer in diameter.

My apologies to the OP for being off topic.

@n2ri
I have several IR Thermometers, each uses a laser as a guide to point it in the proper location. Those have a conical focus as you describe above.  But that is due to the fact that the laser isn't what actually reads the temperature.  I have never seen a laser thermometer, do you have a picture or a link of one?

well thats what they call them. and the line lasers all say how much the lines widen depending on how far they are away from laser. these cheap ones double width every foot about

@n2ri
I have several IR Thermometers, each uses a laser as a guide to point it in the proper location. Those have a conical focus as you describe above.  But that is due to the fact that the laser isn't what actually reads the temperature.  I have never seen a laser thermometer, do you have a picture or a link of one?

Does it matter what the distance is from the camera to the center of the turntable?  If I put the camera closer, (let's say 9.25" instead of 10.5", and the accounted for this in the setup, would it create any problems.

Right now, when I put the camera assembly at 10.5" from the center of the turntable (as it was originally), the rails pass through the camera tower case.  Since there's nothing in there are but wires, I can always redesign the case to suit, but If I were to release this for others to do the mod, they might be reluctant to make the change.

Here is what I have in mind:

Seemed to me like he was only going to use one camera that would be moved along the rails to capture pictures from multiple angles doing a scan with the camera at each different location on the arc.  But I could be wrong.

pirvan,
     Do you plan on making the files available once you get it perfected?  Looking good!

Bob

That's correct.  Just one camera being moved into various places along the rails, doing multiple scans, then combining the point cloud like I did on some of the scans I posted.

As for releasing the files, let's first see how far along I get with it.  Right now it's still to early.

pirvan,
     Do you plan on making the files available once you get it perfected?  Looking good!

Bob

One issue you may run into is that the Pi only supports a single CSI camera.  You would either need to use multiple networked Pi's, a camera multiplexer, or somehow utilize the Pi compute module (which supports 2).

You could also use USB cameras.

- Uriah

it was a Next Engine 3D Scanner HD. have seen others with similar way of holding model

The camera/laser assembly shown at -15°, 0° & 30°.  The maximum upper (positive) travel is 45°.

Next up, I have to work out how to mount the rails to the scanner body.

Perhaps Uriah can suggest a source for a longer [camera cable].

Adafruit has a selection of exended length CSI cables for the Raspberry Pi camera board.

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1731
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1648