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Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

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Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#11

Post by slopperyslip »

joshu wrote: post #2

I love this. I collect interesting obsolete hardware; I bought a Light L16 recently for cheap but it can no longer update itself, unfortunately. Lytro is on my list as well. The lytro itself is a lightfield / plenoptic camera. It captures the angle of light coming into the camera as well, which lets you calculate focus AFTER the photo has been taken. Focus is, of course, itself just another computation. http://graphi…

Was curious about a Light L19 seeing how cheap it is now and did some digging around for how to update. This Github project from an XDA thread may do the trick https://github.com/helloavo/Light-L16-Archive

Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#13

Post by mjburgess »

MrGilbert wrote: post #8

I must admit, I have a really soft spot for well-done reverse engineering write-ups like this. Show me logic board pictures, console commands, code and who-knows-what, and I'm happy as a squirrel.

I like the simplicity and elegance of embedded programming, but I never have much motivation to do any. I've never really been a hardware person (out of choice).

Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#14

Post by d1sxeyes »

joshu wrote: post #2

I love this. I collect interesting obsolete hardware; I bought a Light L16 recently for cheap but it can no longer update itself, unfortunately. Lytro is on my list as well. The lytro itself is a lightfield / plenoptic camera. It captures the angle of light coming into the camera as well, which lets you calculate focus AFTER the photo has been taken. Focus is, of course, itself just another computation. http://graphi…

That’s a really interesting way of phrasing it I’d never fully considered: of course you are right, a physical lens is just performing predictable mathematical transformations on the light passing through it.

Thank you, that was something of a revelation in understanding how these cameras actually work.

Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#15

Post by skhr0680 »

Firerouge wrote: post #7

Shame lytro never made a security video camera variant. Seems like the ideal application, ensuring that anything from vehicle plates in the background to faces in the foreground can be brought into focus. What sort of fps is the API capable of producing jpegs? It sounds like the larger illum can manage 3 fps natively, but couldn't find specs on the original lytro.

Ideally a surveillance camera will already be focused to have the entire scene sharp. The Lytro camera had postage stamp resolution as far as I remember so it wouldn’t solve the problem that you are thinking of.

Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#16

Post by joshu »

sacnoradhq wrote: post #5
joshu wrote: post #2

I love this. I collect interesting obsolete hardware; I bought a Light L16 recently for cheap but it can no longer update itself, unfortunately. Lytro is on my list as well. The lytro itself is a lightfield / plenoptic camera. It captures the angle of light coming into the camera as well, which lets you calculate focus AFTER the photo has been taken. Focus is, of course, itself just another computation. http://graphi…

-- Media -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc Toshiba Twin S-VHS changer https://youtu.be/aEEYuJw7vFk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitClips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_Rockers 0.85" / 22 mm HDD used in MP3 players https://web.archive.org/web/20120718025547/http://www.toshib... -- Computing peripherals -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat https://www.compu…

I have a cuecat and a pc jr keyboard in my collection, as it focuses on tech innovation failure. A bunch of other items on this list are good additions.

I should probably make a list of my collection. A working juicero. A rolleron. An itanium cpu. A working General Magic device. The iBook I wrote del.icio.us on…

I had capsela as a kid. Hadn’t thought about it in decades. Thank you.

Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#17

Post by joshu »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #14
joshu wrote: post #2

I love this. I collect interesting obsolete hardware; I bought a Light L16 recently for cheap but it can no longer update itself, unfortunately. Lytro is on my list as well. The lytro itself is a lightfield / plenoptic camera. It captures the angle of light coming into the camera as well, which lets you calculate focus AFTER the photo has been taken. Focus is, of course, itself just another computation. http://graphi…

That’s a really interesting way of phrasing it I’d never fully considered: of course you are right, a physical lens is just performing predictable mathematical transformations on the light passing through it. Thank you, that was something of a revelation in understanding how these cameras actually work.

More importantly, focusing a lens is one of many possible transformations. Look up coded apertures. so much is possible.

Re: Lytro Unlock – Making a bad camera slightly better

#19

Post by joshu »

slopperyslip wrote: post #11
joshu wrote: post #2

I love this. I collect interesting obsolete hardware; I bought a Light L16 recently for cheap but it can no longer update itself, unfortunately. Lytro is on my list as well. The lytro itself is a lightfield / plenoptic camera. It captures the angle of light coming into the camera as well, which lets you calculate focus AFTER the photo has been taken. Focus is, of course, itself just another computation. http://graphi…

Was curious about a Light L19 seeing how cheap it is now and did some digging around for how to update. This Github project from an XDA thread may do the trick https://github.com/helloavo/Light-L16-Archive

Thank you for this.
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