best way to connect 35 cameras

[JGG]

Hi,

I'm working on a project and we need about 40-50 cameras taking photo simultaneously with a flash in order to make a 3D model. The current approach is to take 40-50 cameras (DSLR), but the cost is very high (about 500eur/camera). I'm investigating whether there would be a cool way to use Raspberry pi to reduce on the cost.

From what I read, I will need 1x raspberry pi per camera. Is this right? Does it make sense to try looking raspberry pi for this application?

What is the best camera module out there ? Is there any camera module that will give photos comparable to a DSLR?

Thanks for your help and ideas

[B.Goode]

You might find some ideas here: https://pifacedigital.wordpress.com/201 ... -reloaded/

[jamesh]

Hi,

I'm working on a project and we need about 40-50 cameras taking photo simultaneously with a flash in order to make a 3D model. The current approach is to take 40-50 cameras (DSLR), but the cost is very high (about 500eur/camera). I'm investigating whether there would be a cool way to use Raspberry pi to reduce on the cost.

From what I read, I will need 1x raspberry pi per camera. Is this right? Does it make sense to try looking raspberry pi for this application?

What is the best camera module out there ? Is there any camera module that will give photos comparable to a DSLR?

Thanks for your help and ideas

You won't get DSLR quality, the camera module is $35 or so. You can get very good images in well lit scenes though. Syncronising might be awkward, but you can fire off the change of a GPIO which should be fairly accurate.

The Zero would be OK for this, which reduces cost

[topguy]

Also this: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/afford ... y-scanner/

[PiGraham]

You could probably use compact digital cameras for a good balance of quality and cost and control them over USB from one or more RPi running Gphoto2.

[bensimmo]

Have a look at this too.
If you're in the UK (I thought it was also world service, guess not) you can see it on iPlayer.
viewtopic.php?f=62&t=203913

[mikerr]

The Zero would be OK for this, which reduces cost

so where can we buy 35 Pi Zeroes ? ( has official line of 1 per customer changed? )

I'd think most solutions would use ethernet to sync the pi units, so it's more suited to Pi3's

[PiGraham]

The Zero would be OK for this, which reduces cost

so where can we buy 35 Pi Zeroes ? ( has official line of 1 per customer changed? )

I'd think most solutions would use ethernet to sync the pi units, so it's more suited to Pi3's

Purchase over 35 days?

Maybe sync the clocks with NTP and use system time to time exposures.

35 nodes on a LAN might have some congestion, maybe? Send a broadcast?

A serial message on gpio to all Pi is an option.

[HermannSW]

35 * (Pi Zero + v1 camera + Zero camera cable) + 1 * Pi Zero master
= 35 * ((5$+5$)+5$+1$) + (5$+5$)
= 570$

Pi Zero 5$, shipping 5$. 36th Pi Zero will be time master to synchronize shot of 35 camera subsystem Pi Zeros via GPIO.

[topguy]

Where can you find 5$ Pi-cameras ? Isnt the standard 8MP v2.1 camera like 30$ ?

[bensimmo]

The V1 camera's are cloned now.
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale- ... odule.html

[HermannSW]

Cheapest on aliexpress for v1 5MP camera currently is slightly above 6$ with free shipping, but prices are below 5$ from time to time:
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?is ... roupsort=1

The left camera is a v1 camera:


The cable included is for Pi 2B/3B, Pi Zero needs a special cable for 1$ with free shipping:
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale- ... mera+cable

You might want to invest 0.55$ for each camera for a camera mount:
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale- ... mera+mount

I only use 1 part of that (for v1 as well as for v2 camera) in order to not have to think about whether 3rd hand aligator clips will damage camera or no, the clips now hold the camera mount and not the camera. Here it is used to hold a v2 camera: