Embedded Linux On a High Speed Camera

destructor writes: "Linuxdevices has an interesting article on a High Speed Gated Intensified Camera that "combines a fast gated micro-channel plate (MCP) image intensifier, a CMOS image sensor, and an embedded computer based on an Axis Communications ETRAX RISC processor running Embedded Linux." The camera (Elphel Model 303) itself is network operable and can be used for capturing images of explosions, lightning bolts, etc. Link found via. megarad.com."

Comments

Home-Matrix movies or Meteor shower capture?

[itsnotme]

Wouldnt mind using this to make my own home-brewed Matrix movies..

Kid jumping off roof with blankie thinking he's going to be ok.. you get to get every angle of that by running around him with the camera :-)

Would be nice to be able to take a lot of shots ( and I mean helluva lot of shots ) of meteor showers then you'd have a pretty good chance of grabbing a good shot..

Blinded Me with Science

[Alien54]

As usual, Linux/unix/*nix/etc are found where important research are found. This is very encouraging for the future.

Just for the educational point:

What is a "gated intensified camera"?

This term refers to a class of ultra-fast cameras, with exposure times in the nanosecond range. "Intensified" comes from image intensifiers -- vacuum tubes similar to those for the nigh-vision devices. "Gated" means those tubes (in contrast to night-vision applications) are used as shutters by applying fast electrical pulses to the control electrodes.

The neat thing is that the camera is operating as a webserver:

I have always disliked trying to find out why my company's systems were not working our customers' sites -- had my hardware really failed, or had they just updated some (seemingly unrelated) software on their computers which were running a popular OS? - - - This last issue unambiguously told me the camera should run a web server. Internet technologies are the best de-facto "common denominator" for the different computers and operating systems.

The world's fastest webcam! amazing! ;-)

High Speed Photography

[oldzoot]

High speed photography is a usefull tool for studying physical phenomena. If using a linux system lowers the cost and increases the availability of a usefull tool, that is a good thing. There are already lots of digital cameras which can take "ordinary" photographs, and there is increasing linux support for those also ( gphoto and gimp for example ). I think that any time an open source tool makes a genuine contribution to society, science or the advancement of ducks, it is a good thing. One concern however is that high speed cameras were initially developed in support of the development of nuclear weapons. Will this tool enhance the proliferation of such devices ?

Cool. See through haze, silt

[AJWM]

Neat. In addition to the obvious high-speed photography applications, a system like this coupled with a similarly short duration flash system could make a vision system capable of seeing through some kinds of particle clouds. Might be more applicable underwater, where the particles are bigger.

Basically, the problem in low-visibility situations like that is that the particles near you scatter so much of your light back at you that you can't see the stuff further away. If you send out a 10 ns pulse of light and don't open the shutter until it has had time to go out some distance (say 100 ns for 100 feet, divided by whatever the refractive index of water is), then you only see the light that has bounced off whatever is 100 feet away (well, mod multiple reflections from silt particles).

Won't work in really thick clouds, of course, but it has possibilities. (Consider, for example, driving in a snowstorm at night -- you don't need or want the snow immediately in front of the headlights lit up.)