Fixed camera lighting upgrade

[Mike]

If you never find you need to tweak vision settings then there's little point.
Dimming the LEDs only gets you so far - the /main point is to increase the light level such that any change in ambient light level is negligible compared to the illuminator. Even if the camera has no adjustments, the camera lens probably does have an aperture adjustment.
If this is already fairly closed you may need to add a filter to reduce the light level into the camera.

[PSMike]

The simple method I used was to cut out the old LEDs, drop the wire from the 12V 12 LED ring below through a hole on the aluminium LED support ring and fix the PCB in place on top of the aluminium ring with double sided tape or your preferred fixing method.

Solder the wires to the old supply wires and cable tie to one of the camera supports, keeping things tidy. Finish up by placing a 15mm copper end feed straight coupler on top the the camera lens to stop light getting to the camera, I didn't fix or glue it as it sits nicely.

I also used a black marker pen on the inside edge of the translucent white ring, but don't know if the penmanship made a difference as there's no lens flare. Cost under 3 quid, takes about half an hour.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2x-White-40mm-12V-1210-3528-9-SMD-LED-Car-Angel-Eyes-Headlight-Halo-Ring-Light/183572284970?hash=item2abdc2c62a:g:IAwAAOSwwnVcdSNT
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Plumbing-End-Feed-Copper-Fitting-Straight-Coupler-8mm-up-to-67mm/192517422892?var=492606537586&hash=item2cd2eebf2c:m:mmMolovfPLzEMZuU-s0WLmw

Cheers
Mike

[phonoplug]

Just to add my 2p worth. I recently also replaced the dim and dingy component camera illumination ring. After replacing with that in the pictures below I had to change the setting on the rotary dip switch at the bottom of the camera from 0 to 2, and that brought the threshold adjustment figures for most CDFs down to around 0 where previously most were edging to -35 with the old illumination (or 100+ with the new illumination but the camera still set to 0). The key thing though is that its very insensitive to ambient light now so I no longer have to darken the room when using the machine and hope the sun doesn't shine through the windows!

[phonoplug]

ahem apologies for the huge photos!

[trev]

My camera definitely has no shutter control so it sounds like I need an external resistor to set the led brightness to a point that does not saturate the lens. Anyone have a recommendation for using an ND filter over an external resistor?

I will make Mike's board up and test it out. I have noticed that over time some components seem to find a placement offset. I locked their x and y position in the cdf file but they still seem to drift. I think this is due to changes in image detection due to light levels. I literally saw placement perfect to start with and then it just moved over time but only for some components.

I will do the fiducial camera lights as well to help with auto correct. That always seems to struggle.

Trev

[Mike]

My camera definitely has no shutter control so it sounds like I need an external resistor to set the led brightness to a point that does not saturate the lens. Anyone have a recommendation for using an ND filter over an external resistor?

I will make Mike's board up and test it out. I have noticed that over time some components seem to find a placement offset. I locked their x and y position in the cdf file but they still seem to drift. I think this is due to changes in image detection due to light levels. I literally saw placement perfect to start with and then it just moved over time but only for some components.

I will do the fiducial camera lights as well to help with auto correct. That always seems to struggle.

Trev

The whole point is to increase the light level so that ambient chages are a smaller proportion of the light the camera sees, so although reducing the illuminator to the point where it no longer saturates the camera may give some improvement, the man objective is to reduce the camera's sensitivity to the point where ambient light is insignificant compared to the illuminator.
If the camera doesn't have the shutter time control, first thing would be to stop the lens down as far as it can go, then look at adding an ND filter

[alanambrose]

>>> If the camera doesn't have the shutter time control, first thing would be to stop the lens down as far as it can go, then look at adding an ND filter.

On my RV1S, I just replaced the LED ring without changing the camera settings or using an ND filter etc. I leave the interior lights on when it's placing and it seems fine. I think the camera AGC sorts it all out OK.

Alan

[trev]

Well I have it working of sorts but did not have a lot of time to fiddle with it. Mike's board is extremely bright!

I have ordered an ND4 filter so will experiement a bit when that comes.

There seems to be a few different board designs now so everyone is going to have different settings which is a shame.

Thanks for all the comments though, the forum certainly is keeping these machines alive.

[Mike]

I just got round to upgrading the lighting on the RV4 flying camera - the old one was starting to get really picky on ambient light levels as the LEDs degraded. It got to the point where a difference of 5 either way on the threshold made the difference between recognising or not. 

All I can say is WOW what a difference - now it just works all the time, whether or not it's sunny outside, or whether the LED tape I put inside the frame is on or off.

The original light is a pair of white acrylic blocks with three 3mm red LEDs down holes in the back. I didn't have any 3mm whites to hand so made a small board with a strip of SMD white LEDs and a 1mm white acrylic diffuser. This is a bit more uniform than the original, but don't know if this is much of a factor.
I then put a neutral-density filter (grey tint acrylic) over the camera to desensitise it.
The factory settings mode allows the camera to be viewed, with thresholding on or off. I set the LED current to get a clean thresholded image image with a threshold value of 220

[trev]

Thanks, that's really good to know.

Trev

[Mike]

Also - if you take off the mirror assembly, after replacing it, do a camera centre adjust in factory setting (Put tool 5 on the nozzle by hand), as any slight change in mirror position makes a noticeable difference to accuracy.
I realised this when I noticed there was a placement offset between parts placed using the fixed and flying cameras.

[trev]

Hi Mike, do you have any images of your new OTF camera illumination mod?

[Mike]

Bit hard to get pics in-situ.
Black tape around is same as on original

[trev]

Appreciated, thanks.

[trev]

Mike, how is the OTF camera performing with the white led upgrade?