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The Daredevil Camera

ribbonfarm.com

151–158 of 158 posts

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#151

A Dutch startup called Sorama has been selling this commercially for a while. It's very cool actually, they sell mostly to companies who want to make their hardware less noisy. It turns out that noisy machines are often mostly noisy because a relatively small number of parts are too flexible, not screwed on tightly enough, and so on. Track that down and you know where your low-hanging fruit is. A daredevil cam is exa…

There was a videoreport on this startup last year by Tweakers.net: https://tweakers.net/video/10249/een-camera-die-geluid-visua... (it's in Dutch)

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#152
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not as a regular income; but if funding for these projects is a limitation I bet crowdfunding would bring in funds to keep these posts coming :)

Random site idea. Could there be a version of Patreon, where not the author themself but instead the fans start the pledges. The author could choose to take the money or not, and could prove their identity by putting their bitcoin address in a tag on their website. So we could create a project on the site say "support sound camera posts from ribbonfarm.com" and money would be gathered for it, then when a new qualifyi…

Ethereum contract for a public deposit account that takes a public key as input, maybe?

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#153
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What app is that, Artlav?

Not sure by now - it was shown to me last summer. The thing basically scanned a line across the image, and produced sound based on the brightness. So, with your eyes closed you could quite easily imagine a basic shape of the image from the sound. Maybe someone would recognize the description.

This thread inspired me to look this stuff up. I think you're thinking of vOICe? https://www.seeingwithsound.com/

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#154
post #40

I think the whole thing could be done pretty much all in software. Setup a bunch of phone numbers in Twilio, using a bunch of your friends iPhones, strategically located, call the numbers and process the data using Twilio API. Whatsapp or other real-time voice communication apps with an API may work too.

You'll never be able to collect phase shift info from such a setup. Not only will each phone's DSP algos delay the data, but the jitter in transmission and reception will just kill any chance of it working properly.

... but I commend their optimism :-P

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#155
post #111
post #86

Very very cool! And it's about time someone did it! Yours is the first hobbyist project I've encountered since my own extremely crude ten-dollar version in 1981. No square array or processing, mine was a mechanical scanner-disk: eight LEDs glued in a spiral to an old vinyl record album, each with an electret microphone and and op amp. Spin the disk with a motor at about 6Hz. Wind noise, so add foam to the mics. It wo…

Wow, that's one heck of a sonar. This is the sort of images i'm after.

Put one on ROV for a trip to Loch Ness! That, or scavanging old outboard motors in muddy lakes.

Don't miss multi-pages video gallery:

http://www.soundmetrics.com/Image-Gallery

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#156
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of those projects is feelSpace[1] which is a belt with vibrators giving you either a new compass sense, or tells you where to go (as a navigation system). [1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/feelspace-follow-your-gut...

Thanks for the link. I have wanted one of these belts for years! But I can't believe how expensive it is.

I find it quite expensive too. I guess the price is fair if you include the research they did, plus the prototyping, manufacturing and company overhead.

I've tried a prototype version of this belt once (for a couple of hours), it worked surprisingly well. But integrating the vibrations as a "new sense" into your brain (so that your subconscious can use it) takes at least some days.

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#157
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure by now - it was shown to me last summer. The thing basically scanned a line across the image, and produced sound based on the brightness. So, with your eyes closed you could quite easily imagine a basic shape of the image from the sound. Maybe someone would recognize the description.

This thread inspired me to look this stuff up. I think you're thinking of vOICe? https://www.seeingwithsound.com/

Yes that's the one! https://youtu.be/XuosPzluCRg

Re: The Daredevil Camera

#158
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1996 I was prototyping a belt with piezo transducers spaced around it with each doubling as emitters and receivers for a crude ultrasonic distance, and then each would vibrate at a higher frequency the closer the object came. Nicknamed 'batbelt' in-house. I dropped it after looking into insurance requirements and ADA compliance.

Did you get it to work? What was the sensation like?

Yes, and I used a Basic Stamp, and replaced it with a PIC chip later on. I had several normal issues: ignoring very close objects like your arms swinging when you walk; short postives; timing issues with getting the whole array working, since I was trying to triple use piezo transducers as emitter/receiver/vibrator. Other than those issues, it was not too refined due to the limitations of the transducers, speed of the 8-bit chips I was using, and you had to wear it within proximity of your body, but then not cover it up.

Before I ditched the idea, I was going to put the vibrator belt as a second belt worn under the clothing, but there was no Bluetooth or WiFi or easily accessible way of going wireless between the belts in a practical fashion.

I had my neighbor, blind man who had a guide dog, trial it. He was a great guy, and helped me quite a bit to 'see' past my vision biases. Unfortunately, he passed away. He used to work for the IRS, and we would joke about me getting my deductions past him! He did like what I had accomplished, but many blind people do not have the money for something that is not subsidized, and then you get caught up in the compliance insurance issues. Not sure if that has changed much nowadays.

It was a great maker project before the 'maker' movement. Too bad there was no startup, or crowd-funding web sites back then!

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