Many sci-fi movies and TV shows feature hand-held devices capable of sensing all manner of wonderful things. The µ Spec Mk II from [j] is built very much in that vein, packing plenty of functionality into a handy palm-sized form factor.
An ESP32 serves as the brains of the device, hooked up to a 480×320 resolution touchscreen display. On board is a thermal camera, with 32×24 pixel resolution from an MLX90640 sensor. There’s also a 8×8 LIDAR sensor, too, and a spectral sensor that can capture all manner of interesting information about incoming light sources. This can also be used to determine the transmission coefficient or reflection coefficient of materials, if that’s something you desire. A MEMS microphone is also onboard for capturing auditory data. As a bonus, it can draw a Mandelbrot set too, just for the fun of it.
Future plans involve adding an SD card so that data captured can be stored in CSV format, as well as expanding the sensor package onboard. It’s a project that reminds us of some of the tricorder builds we’ve seen over the years. Video after the break.
It would be interesting to see with sensor fusion, various sources plus some machine learning.
What that LIDAR do though? Can you whip it around and get a freehand 3D scan of the environment or something?
Maybe with a 9DOF sensor to track motion, maybe.
A plain old optical camera would be a great addition to the thermal image – like FLIR does to yield a much more usable image even with low-res detectors.
That optical camera could be used to map the environment to track motion for 3D scanning too, SLAM-like.
It’s just a SMOP (small matter of programming).
The LIDAR is just scanning the distances of the aimed plain. Its a quite new sensor and i was happy to implement it. The LIDAR menu is showing the RAW data then it cycles through interpolated data with a color map adjusted to min/max data of the last scan, after that the color map is adjusted to start over every full meter.
For a 3D scan the resolution is not fine enough.
In the end this sensor device is just a technic demonstrator.
Best wishes, J