HACKADAY prize ENTRY: RANGEFINDER + cam = SMARTZOOM

The fascinating thing about submissions for The Hackaday prize is seeing unusual jobs as well as ideas that may not otherwise pop up. [ken conrad] has a curious but thoughtfully created concept for Raspberry Pi-based SmartZoom Imaging that utilizes a Pi Zero and camera plus some laser emitters to produce a gadget with a extremely certain capability: a cam that regularly as well as dynamically resizes the picture make the subject appear consistently framed as well as sized, regardless of its distance from the lens. The concept brings together two separate functions: rangefinding as well as automated zooming as well as re-sampling of the cam image.

The Raspberry Pi utilizes the cam board plus some forward-pointing laser dots as a rangefinder; as long as at least two laser dots are visible on the subject, the distance between the gadget as well as the subject can be calculated. The Pi then utilizes the understanding of exactly how near or far the subject is to present a final picture whose zoom level has been adjusted to match (and offset) the variety of the subject from the camera, in impact canceling out the method an item appears larger or smaller based on distance.

We’ve seen visible laser dots as the basis of rangefinding before, however never connected into a zoom function. Doubtlessly, [ken conrad] will update his job with some example applications, however in the meantime we’re left wondering: is there a concrete, functional utilize situation for this unusual device? We have no idea, however we’d definitely have fun trying to discover one.

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