Day 23 - 25 end of week 5

I was in the adirodacks visiting family and not at work for these days but I checked in on the presentation and script over wifi once a day.

Day 22

Today we created most of the presentation from based off the outline we wrote. We also created a script of things to talk about with each slide. The script wont be used for the presentation but it is a way for us to gather our thoughts for the first few dry runs of the presentation. We are trying to use as few words as possible for the presentation to make it as visual as possible and keep it interesting.

Day 21

Today I did a few minor troubleshooting things with the hardware and exchanged a few cables for ones that would work better. we also began working on the Powerpoint presentation for our talk on the 14th. We also came as close as  we have come to taking our first anaglyph. something was wrong with the processing and one of the images ended up flipped but we took two pictures and merged the red and blue/green channels to make an anaglyph form image.

Day 20

The first thing I did today was I shortened a usb extension cable that was needed to have the usb port at the edge of the case. Without it the usb port would have been too far inside the case to plug anything into so the extender makes the usb port usable. Also the new step up converter arrived today so I soldered that into place. The new step up converter can supposedly handle up to two amps of current so theoretically it should work for our system which pulls around 1.4 amps. We set up a prototype of our camera and the power system worked for about 15 minutes and that is the extent of testing we have done.

Day 19

Today I started out the day by cutting an Ethernet cable in half and soldering all of the connections back together to practice for shortening the cable. We need the cable shortened so that it will fit inside the case more easily. Soldering those eight individual connections is a bit tricky, but by doing this practice I came up with a good system for connecting the Ethernet cable wires. Then at 11 the whole Intern group went on a bike ride over to the University of Rochester and Mount Hope Cemetery. We saw the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. It is a stark reminder of the sexism of the era that Douglass has two large grave stones and markers leading people to where his grave is, where as Susan B. Anthony has a small grave stone near her family members of which the males have much larger graves. After lunch we rode back to RIT and then I shortened the Ethernet cable and tested it and it worked!

Day 18

Today the search for a new step up converter continued. Searching for the step up converter was tricky because everything that we found yesterday and during the first hour today had some problem with it. Some were to weak, a lot of them were step down converters because it is a much more likely problem to have to need to step down than step up the voltage. There were only a few that we found that would work but they were on shady websites and would be shipped from China and likely not be here in an adequately short amount of time. But I found one this morning that will work perfectly and ships in two days so we ordered that. I also experimented with the possibility of working around the software challenge of getting the two cameras to take the pictures at the same time with hardware. The capture button is on the display screen module and tells one Pi to take a picture through the GPIO pins and then that Pi is supposed to communicate with the second Pi and sync when the two pictures are taken. However I talked to David about, and then experimented with the possibility of running wires from the button to the second Pi so that when the button was pushed it would send the signal to both of the Pis.

day 17

Today with the new battery charged and ready for testing, I plugged everything together and miraculously it worked! However when I attempted to repeat this success, the system overloaded the step up converter and it promptly fried. After consulting Dr. Bob Kremens and looking up a few specifications for parts, we realized that this was because the step up converter we were using was rated up to 200 Milliamps and we were trying to push 1.4 amps through it. So once we had a battery capable of doing this it fried the step up converter. Now the search for a new converter begins. It is a frustrating search because everything is either the wrong part or has some other problem. There is still hope however.

Day 16

Today the new battery arrived! I immediately got it charging and then planned how I am going to put the power delivery system back together as I took it apart to hook up the main electricals to the external power. I also researched D-bus because we may use it to sync when the pi cams will take the two that make up the anaglyph. Tomorrow, I have a lot to do with the power delivery system and make sure the new battery will work. All the stats say that it should do quite nicely but I won't know for sure until I test it tomorrow.

Day 15 - end if week three

Today I tinkered with the raspberry pi setup some more because the power supply had been heating up the step up converter yesterday. After hooking up the power supply in several spots with alligator clips, I realize that this was because I was pumping 5 volts into the step up converter meant convert from 3.7 volts to 5 volts. After I figured this out I hooked up the power supply above the step up converter and made sure the pis were working more than just powering up. After finding out they did, my day ended early when I had to the college and careers event at rit. Which I recommend to anyone who is even thinking about going to RIT.

Day 14

Today we set up a model of most of the internal electronics of the camera using an external power source. The external power source we used was a variable power output unit. We dialed it in to 5 volts and both of the pis and the display screen worked perfectly. I also figured out how a step up converter works. It raises the voltage and lowers the current of electricity to maintain constant power and raise the voltage. This explained why the old battery wasn't working properly, because after the step up conversion it was pumping just over 1 amps of electricity. This is how the new battery is different from the old one. Theoretically it should have a maximum amperage of 4.6 or so amps after the step up conversion.

Day 13

Today Professor Pow told me that the shipping on the replacement battery I selected was such that it probably would not arrive for a week and told me to look for something that we could get more easily. As a result I spent most of the day shopping online for a suitable replacement that was closer to home. What I found was that there are not that many suitable replacement to begin with and none that would get here more quickly. After learning this the hard way I told Professor Pow that we would just have to wait for the one I had picked out originally because it was the best replacement. After that I spent my time researching how to move files between the two Raspberry Pis.

Day 12

David charged the battery yesterday, so today I set up the Raspberry Pis and other components for the camera, hooked up the power system with the battery. The setup was enough to power up the system for at least half an hour, but the amperage is to low from the current battery to power it effectively. Things such as the display screen being dim and not being able to type on the Raspberry Pis are symptoms of this problem. This lead to research into the battery and the purchase of a battery with a higher amperage output. After the time in the lab today we took a field trip to the Mees Observatory. The Observatory was really interesting and the view of the night sky was beautiful, and got better as the night went on. But mostly the trip was a really good forced bonding session between all of the interns. It was a great experience overall, five stars would suggest to a friend.

Day 11

Today I was out of town but I told David to charge the battery today so that when I am in the lab tomorrow I can determine whether one battery will be sufficiant to run both Raspberry Pis and the display screen.

Day 10 - end of week two

Today I took the proof of concept wiring and improved upon it. I shortened wires where possible as well as soldered a few conections that were being made by wires with alligator clips on each end. I also made the addition of a second micro usb connector to power the second Raspberry Pi. The day was going well until I made the realization that there wasn't enough charge in the battery to see if it could power both of the Raspberry Pis and the display screen.

Day 9

Today I built a proof of concept of the majority of the electrical system. So far it works well enough to power one Raspberry Pi as well as the display screen. However, In its current form the power system is to large and bulky and I need to cut down on the amount of wiring. I also need to wire in the power for the second Raspberry pi.

Abstract

RIT Center for Imaging Science

Abstract: Imaging Systems Development Lab (Pow)
July - August 2015

One way to make a 3D image is the use of red and cyan filters, and red-cyan 3D glasses. This is called an Anaglyph. The technology of anaglyph 3D images utilizes red and cyan filtered copies of the same image laid on top of one another, albeit slightly shifted. Once the viewer uses the glasses, the two filtered lenses cause two independent images to appear in the viewer’s brain with a slight offset which the brain interprets as depth to the image. The goal in this lab is to create a camera that takes anaglyphs on its own, without the need for external processing on an application such as Photoshop or ImageJ, and can have these photos exported via HDMI or USB and viewed using 3D glasses. The system will be based on the Raspberry Pi 2 computer system with Raspberry Pi cameras and fixed-focal length lenses (selected using a Pugh Analysis). The CamanJS system will use JavaScript code to process the images, while Python code will be the interface used to take the photos. The Python is also used as the user interface for the camera. The first objective is to make a working prototype. Although each Raspberry Pi system will require a separate power supply, the second objective is to integrate them using splicing/soldering so that only one power switch is necessary. The third objective is to have the camera be a prototype for a “do-it-yourself,” or DIY, camera. Further goals include adding audio and video functions to the camera,  so that the system could record 3D video (when using 3D red/cyan glasses to view the video stream). Although the end-result is designed to be merely a prototype, it can pave the way for future developments in imaging science.

Day 8

The first thing I did today was to splice the eight wires and solder the exposed ends of the wires, split into two separate paths like a snakes tongue. Surprisingly the smoke from the molten solder did not set off the fire alarm. While I did this David loaded the Raspbian noobs onto the MicroSD cards with the adapters that I brought in. When I was finished splicing the wires I used one of the Raspberry Pis to get Raspbian formated on each of the SD cards. Once this was complete, I paired off the Micro SD cards and Raspberry Pis and numbered them and took down their mac addresses so that David could get wifi access for them. My final task for the day was to remove twenty some pins soldered into the display screens circuit board, and solder in a couple of wires. My task for tomorrow is to get power to the display.

day 7

Today we got in some of the parts we were missing, most importantly the micro SD cards. The micro SD cards act as a hard drive for the Raspberry Pis, and store almost everything including the operating system. the operating system loader is downloaded from the internet onto a microSD, then boot the Raspberry Pi with the SD card in it and it formats the operating system (Raspbian). We needed a micro SD to SD adapter, which we could not find, and so that task was put off until tomorrow. As well as some more codingbat, I also set to work on the power supply task. the power has to go from the one battery into two Raspberry Pis which means a spliced wire or two. After accounting for doing two cameras and a range of spliced lengths, I decided that I needed to make eight spliced wires. Unfortunately I discovered that I need a soldering iron to complete this task and the one in the lab does not work very well. looks like I am bringing mine from home.

day 6

Professor Pow was out today and with many crucial parts still not in yet, I looked on with the programmers so that I could learn what a bit about what they were doing. They were trying to figure out how to integrate Caman JS into a raspberry pi for converting the images into anaglyphs. I also spent time refreshing myself on Java using the website Codingbat. Codingbat gives you a word problem a couple of lines long and then you have to write code to solve the problem and get the correct output. It is a great tool for anyone looking to learn Java.

Day 5

Today I helped set up the raspberry pis to run the software we need to make them into our 3D camera. I also spent some time learning java comands for editing pictures.

Day 4

Today we looked at more lenses online and it is a soul crushing task. We finished that and then put the data from the lenses into an execl document and made did a pugh analysis.

Day 3

I spent more time working with images in image J making anaglyphs and some interesting things. The colors on the anaglyph seemed to switch on the left and the right of the image. After deciding on a starting seperation, we began looking at lenses.

Day 2

Today we did some team building exercises in the morning at the red barn at rit. In the afternoon we worked in our groups and I spent more time working on the optimal lense seperation by taking pictures at different offsets, changing the color of the images and overlaying them with the image J software.

Day 1

Day 1: Today we have worked on a starter group project making a slide show presentation that include who we were and a few image based tasks. After a pizza lunch we broke off into our groups. In my group (the imaging systems developement lab) we got to know each other and then made on our task lists and work breakdown plan as well as I began looking into the best distance to have between the lenses for the camera.