Over at EDN, [Brian Dipert] has been tearing down web cameras. A few months ago, he broke into a bargain basement camera. This time, he’s looking into a premium unit. Although we have to admit from some of what he reports, we are a little surprised at some of the corners cut. For example, it’s a 4K camera that doesn’t quite provide a 4K image. Despite a Sony CMOS sensor, [Brian] found the low-light performance to be poor. However, it does carry a much larger price tag than the previous camera examined.
The interesting part is about half way down the page when he tries to open the unit up. It seems like it is getting harder and harder to get into things and this camera was no exception. The device finally gives up. Inside is a relatively unremarkable board with a host of unknown ICs. One interesting item is a gyro chip that determines if the camera is upside down.
[Brian] managed to get the camera back together with no harm. It is interesting to compare it to the $15 camera he took apart earlier.
If you want maximum cred, do your video calls with a Game Boy camera. Or, at least, add your own lens to a webcam.
Does anyone know what the size is of that weird round coppery thing in half the pictures? This might help to judge the size of other things in those pictures.
Well, it is obviously a US coin, and has deep copper tone. Which means it must be a penny, which has the diameter 19.05 mm (1/4 inch).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_United_States_dollar
Maybe to you that is obvious, but worldwide nearly al coins have heads on them and some reference to that non-existing entity. I have no interest in maintaining a database of coins just in case someone happens to use one of them as a size reference.
In a broader sense, it is just a bad Idea to use some kind of national object when you want a size reference for an international public. For those things rulers are invented. A long time ago, some smart guy also realized that using body parts for size references is not a good idea, and instead he used the distance from the north pole to the equator of this planet as a reference. This Idea worked so well that over 99% of the countries adopted it world wide. (Or more accurate: They all adopted it, except some exceptions keep on using archaic units in day to day use).
It is a coin man, just go with the flow.
We’ve progressed far from the banana as a unit of measure.
A penny nayed is a penny spurned?
Coins are about the same size world wide. I don’t think it’s suppose to be a super accurate form of measure.
You want measurements of webcam parts in units based on the distance from the north pole to the equator?
Surely this will be more understandable than a US penny!
Tell you what.. we could solve this for both of us. How about you send me a Euro coin and I will send you a penny?
Until then.. even without any Euros of my own I can get a pretty good idea from a picture using one. I won’t complain if you won’t!
It’s about:
0.0101475 arc-seconds in Amsterdam
0.0081403 arc-seconds in NYC
0.0061974 arc-seconds in Mogadishu
0.0014146 arc-seconds in Reykjavík
Obviously much easier using coordinate systems based on the distance from the north pole to the equator! :D
Americans will measure with anything but the metric system. :)
19.05mm is not 1/4 inch
Don’t tell my wife that ..
Nope, 19.05 mm is ¾ inch, not ¼.
Could the few countries holding out for the archaic measurement units (I’m looking at you UK and USA!) please convert to sensible units? (And we in the UK agree to drive the right side of the road instead of the wrong side. (Pun absolutely intended!) 🤓)
Coppery thing??? Are you from this planet?
A religious talisman from 2019,
Trolling? Never seen a coin before? Even Euroland has one cent coins….
Actually if you click on the $15 camera link there he explains that it is “as-usual accompanied by a 0.75″ (19.1 mm) diameter U.S. penny for size comparison purposes.” And that is exactly the kind of notice that gets very tiresome if you drop it into every single post.
Indeed. Nevertheless, I added that same clarifying phrasing to the premium webcam writeup, too ;-)
The article shows why we come to HaD. In the length of article he’s taken to just disassemble a device, the sort we’re used to would’ve disassembled it, reverse-engineered the PCB, extracted the firmware, added an RTSP client and reassembled it into a vision system using a Raspberry Pi.
EE times is a very different audience. They’ve been doing these teardowns for decades, though they used to do parts cost estimates, which was always enlightening.
Cant tell if sarcasm or AI bot. Poe’s law needs an update.
Neither. I was quite genuinely surprised that in an article of that length, nothing was actually done other than remove a few screws.
“One interesting item is a gyro chip that determines if the camera is upside down.”
accelerometer, not gyro
No. Gyro. From https://control.com/technical-articles/accelerometers-and-gyroscopes-understanding-the-metrics-of-motion/ for example…
“While the accelerometer is great at measuring acceleration along three linear axes, a gyroscope excels at measuring rotation, or tilt angles.”
Benq’s software is capable of sensing that the camera is in the process of being dynamically rotated (a key clarification) and accordingly alters its functions (keystone, etc. as mentioned in my writeup)
Do you base your idea that’s it’s a gyro purely on the dynamic adjustment? Because that can easily be done by integrating accelerometer readings. Have you looked at price & availability of gyro chips? Huge & tiny, respectively, compared to accelerometers.
*differentiating
““While the accelerometer is great at measuring acceleration along three linear axes, a gyroscope excels at measuring rotation, or tilt angles.””
100% false. A gyro cannot measure if the camera is upside down as it doesn’t measure the gravitational acceleration vector. It only measures rotational velocities. While you can integrate that to get rotational angles you would need starting values and a way to compensate for drift. Only an accelerometer can measure a tilt angle (when not in free fall or high acceleration).
“Benq’s software is capable of sensing that the camera is in the process of being dynamically rotated”
But the gyro doesn’t determine if the camera is upside down. I just debunked that.
Tangentially related question; is there a site or forum dedicated to things like webcams and hacking?
I’m looking for something that can be a viable alternative to RasPis since I keep running into apparent software solutions without any working solutions. Haking a USB webcam seems like the most viable bath forward and articles like this are helpful in trying to figure out how to make that happen. I’m hoping there is more like this article out there.
I think there are too many pictures. In one picture, there’s a single screw with the penny. Another photo has two of the same screws with the penny. And in case you don’t know what the screws look like, there’s a photo with three of the same screws with the penny.