Converting a Cheap Tesco €10 Camera

Polish made Tesco CIF webcam. CMOS 352 x288,Photo 320 x 240 @ 30fps.Video320 x 240 @ (very slow)fps.Cost €10. One Tesco camera: €10 Remove Lens Unit Unscrew lens unit until it come's out of camera. This one has a lot of thread holding it in. Dismantle Lens unit, In this case by slicing threaded outside until I could get at the piece of plastic holding IR filter in. Came apart easy as it went flying about the place. Remove IR Glass. Try not to damage the sensor. The Camera is now seeing in the IR range as well as the usual visual spectrum. Things will end to look rather crap due to this. A Crude IR Filter Mount made of cardboad roughly cut to filter size and a hole to see out of. It is held on camera lens with smear of cheapo superglue, which is why the camera body has fingerprints on it. Webcam finally has the 780DF60 IR filter installed. This time for the tests on a cardboard mount. Will cut a better one from rubber or something tommorow with the laser. Focusing is real easy to point of being too easy as the camera seems to be real sensitive to slightest changes. Images from the Webcam. 352 x 258 res images as the camera sees it. Left is image from camera with the IR glass removed and the 780DF60 IR filter not installed. Right What the camera sees with the 780DF60 IR filter in front of the lens. It is still showing quite a wide range of IR light, but it should be better than flopply disc material for example.

780DF60 NIR Optical Filter

780DF60 NIR Optical Filter to help me see the "blobs" with the camera.Filter looks like a gold mirror except you can only see a faint redish image through it when outside in the sun. Which is rare to see at present, too much bloody rain. This will be stuck to outside of lens unit of the webcam to cut out the unwanted light spectrum. Allowing the webcam to only see what it should see. This filter is 60nm range Omegabob2 who I got this filter from. Now sells filers that allow only 40nm and even only 25nm range of light through. This is best used with lasers to cut down on the extra light coming into the webcam to give you clearer pictures.

AixiZ Lasers 10mw 780nm Lasers Show Up

My lasers have finally arrived in the post from AixiZ Lasers. They came in a padded jiffy bag and antistatic bag with the mw and voltage written on it. Others have said that these 10mws are 5v, I have no Idea all I know so far is they light when 3.1V is applied. First testing of the lasers with my new N93CX Bench Power supply I bought. I used 3.1V to test to make sure I would not burn the laser module. Since the meter also shows the current being drawn at .05A you can get the Watts drawn 0.115W in this case or 0.16W per laser when in use. The camera also shows the NIR laser beam up, this is just a bare red when you see it with the naked eye.

The Lasers came with the 120°Line generators installed so I don't have to figure out which way to put them. These are used to creat the Laser Light Plane for the setup I intend to put together.

Front Surface Mirrors Arrive

The front surface mirrors have minute chips which are not a bother as they don't touch the mirrored part. You can I think see a slight problems with these mirrors and that is I can actually see through the damm things to a degree. So will need something to absorb or stop any background coming through. My Front Surface Mirrors finally show up in the post. They are from Surplus Shed. Got charged $52.50 postage when it only cost $40 to send. bloody rip off, but at least I got them.They were sent in a brown box(shoebox) which was packed with that giant bubble wrap packets, then in normal bubble wrap and had brown paper sheets between the mirrors and the 2 other mirrors with their backs out. Seems to work ok even that $3 solar keyring I was sent showed up.

PS3 Eye and tbeta Problems

From what I have come across on NUIgroup it seems my Ideas of running tbeta with the PS3 Eye camera is down the toilet as I own a windows PC and not a MAC system. Alexander Popovich is the creator of the PS3Eye driver. This is brilliant as he has managed to get the PS3eye working on the PC as a webcam. You need a separate mic to talk but it mostly for Multitouch. I and others are hoping he will get around to adding PC+tbeta functionality.

Parts list so far

Part	About/WhereGot	Price	Notes
Projectror	Acer X1160	$523.40	Vital but only 800x600
Lasers	10mw 780nm laser	€5.60 each	4 x 10mw 780nm laser modules
Line Generators	Line Generator 120˚	€2.40 each	4 x Line Generator 120˚
Laser Goggles	780nm Laser Goggles	€40.90	OD>3 for 750-850nm
Green Laser	Ebay with free P&P	€12.98	10mw for testing the alignment
Acrylic Sheet	Street hawker	€10	12mm thick
Bandpass filter	780nm Bandpass filter	€20	reduces stray IR signals
New Camera	PS3EYE	€	Not got yet. 100fps@320x240 claimed
Old Camera	Creative something	old	IR filter removed
Software	Tbeta	€	main software
TITLE	TITLE	€	f

Front Surface Mirrors Ordered.

I have ordered my front surface mirrors so they should be here in a few weeks. The mirrors are needed as regular mirrors having the reflective part at the back, require any light entering them to pass through the glass twice and this causes a quite irritating ghost image. The solution is to use first surface mirrors, in these the reflective part is in Front of the glass and any light hitting the mirror does not come in contact with the glass at all. I bought 4 front surface mirrors from SurplusShed. They are not expensive as they are only $4 each or 10 for $35. I went to buy 10 originally however when I got the postage quote it was WTF!! As it was $82.50 i then changed the order to 4 mirrors and got charged $52.50 postage still a horrible amount. The $82.50 is 20lbs for Zone 5. 20lbs is piss take in my opinion as they are only 1/32nd" (0.8mm) thick. The $52.50 is 10lbs weight which I think means they Really pad and pack the mirrors correctly and I so hope so. Or they are up to eBay style Postage padding. EASTMAN KODAK 16" X 11-1/2" THIN FRONT SURFACE Mirrors are here SurplusShed. $4 each Postage is here Priority Mail International If your in continental United States, you only pay $5 postage no mater how heavy it is (you get everything cheap) So 4 x 16" x 11" Front Surface Mirrors and postage = $68.50 or €47.95-€51.37 depending on how robed with the exchange rate I get. Say average of €12.42 per mirrors I suppose really is not that bad. Still that's 3 and 1/4 times what you in the the US pays (€3.80).