Nightvision robot

Overview

I added a Bright Pi to the Trilobot so that it can see at night with infrared light. To improve the lighting I added some tape and sanded down the LEDs.

Videos

:robot:

Hardware

It's a Trilobot with a popsicle stick holding a Bright Pi. :thumbsup:

• Trilobot as a means of becoming a robot
• A Bright Pi board to emit infrared light https://www.pishop.ca/product/bright-pi-bright-white-and-ir-camera-light-for-raspberry-pi/
• A Raspberry Pi NoIR camera to see infrared https://www.pishop.ca/product/raspberry-pi-noir-camera-module-v2-8mp/

LED shapes

Normally LEDs concentrate their light a lot, and you can see this if you stare into them. :sparkles: Very bright! :sparkles: If you look at the LEDs while they're at more of an angle, you barely see the light at all.

By sanding down the ends of the LEDs their light is more spread out. This is mentioned a few places online, but I didn't find much information. I imagine that there are better solutions, like reflectors: https://www.pishop.ca/product/night-vision-camera-module-for-raspberry-pi/

Damaging the Bright Pi

Sanding down a Bright Pi with a rotary tool and some coarse grit sandpaper will cause some damage! Nearly half of the LEDs were out afterwards! I resoldered them all to the board and a few came back to life. I think the vibration must have loosened the solder.

libcamera-vid command

To share the camera feed on the network, with higher brightness and contrast:

libcamera-vid -t 0 -n --width 800 --height 600 --codec h264 --profile baseline --framerate 12 --inline --listen -o tcp://0.0.0.0:8888 --brightness 1.0 --contrast 3.0 --saturation 0

This is what I use at the end of the video to see better!