Turning LEDs into a camera





17 thoughts on “Turning LEDs into a camera

  1. Common, very common in robotics circles. easier to make a Linear optical array sensor like that than trying to use a silly camera.

    Also brunswick does this for pin detection on bowling lanes. there is a location where you can see all pins on 2 lanes, they count the pins using a lineral optical detector like that.

    1. EPROMS normaly would be unsuitable for a camera or sensor as they would hold their charge for a VERY long time. The trick I think you are talking about was the one where you hacked off the top off the old ceramic packaged RAM chips and stuck a microscope slide cover over to prevent oxidation. You could then set the memory values and then read them back when they changed they had seen enough photons ;). The time would give you an indication of the strength of the incident light. Did this with a ZX Spectrum and a bunch of 4164’s. The old Nintendo cameras are similar if I remember right.

  2. My point is not that I can implement a camera (or sensor). This is just one of many experiments.
    Look here for more:


    All of them have been done before. Everything that is not cutting edge science has been done before. The question is if it has been documented in a convenient way.

    BTW: did you check out the “power grid monitoring experiment”?

    1. Respectfully the power grid monitor would be more interesting if one where using a chart recorder application to plot the data so one can examine the results over time, at our leisure. To sit or stand watching a line frequency meter is what a power plant employee is paid to do, the rest of use are being nosy, or curious to put a nice sounding spin to our activity :) Thanks for sharing your project information.

      1. It wouldn’t be to hard to implement an FFT, put out the results through serial and connect it to Nagios or something similar. But this would defer the point that I try to experiment with this shield. Actually if you want to monitor with a computer this is already done and the output is available online. I already mention this in my page including the link.

  3. Just an idea but what about a spinning POV sensor? Instead of LED’s use photo transistors.
    Send the signal through a tuned coil to avoid signal loss? Might be possible with a bit of tinkering.

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