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• Pears are in bloom Annie

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 03/13/2026 at 23:18 • 0 comments

  Development on this camera is pretty much done, I've started working on the next one JDC35.

  Keeping the same platform though IMX477 with Waveshare 2.8" DSI display.

  Yeah today got coffee with coworkers and saw these trees in bloom, I had to go out there and take some pictures.

• It's a G.A.S.

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 03/09/2026 at 06:03 • 0 comments

  So... I keep buying lenses... I have this rule they should be under $100 each.

  I just keep seeing more... I just ordered 2 more: a 16mm Sony and 17mm Bell Howell

  I'm building up a list with photo/video on each one. I'll start a series soon "One lens..."

  I have 5 other cameras partially designed, although one is closer to be built (ordered most parts waiting for DSI display).

   It will be grey on the front and yellow in the back with a swivel sensor mount so the display doesn't have to flip. Already have the PLA

• Fun day

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 03/08/2026 at 21:13 • 0 comments

• 4 Gigs is a lot (of RAM)

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 03/07/2026 at 01:40 • 0 comments

  I did realize these Pi 4B's had 4G of RAM in them. The next ones I'll buy 1GB versions... anyway made me think I should put an LLM in there. But also what else could you do? Well this camera has an IMU in it. Another camera I'll design/build in the future has a mic and speaker... would have even more components than this one. Throw in basic object recognition (really slow FPS), could come up with something.

  I was thinking as the camera detects objects you'd see words floating across the screen like "tree".

  But also I was thinking why not just an overlay of a character on the camera pass through.

  So I'm not much of an artist but here is my legally distinct green anime girl

  Ugh man hackaday still having problems hosting images

  Wait a minute... this gif upload went through

• Successful day

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 03/01/2026 at 16:57 • 0 comments

  I went out to a bird nature preserve type place, a lot of Geese

  It was pretty great setting the shutter speed to the reciprocal and getting the birds in flight.

  It was a bit dark at first in the settings. Today I'll work on getting Pelicam to a basic state but I will have to take a break and work on something else (for $).

  I really want to the build the next camera, it's simpler and will be yellow and grey in color.
  

  I had some pictures to add to this post but currently 500 error since last night oh well.

• Prepping

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/27/2026 at 00:59 • 0 comments

  I'm working on a lens hood right now.

  This is a cool zoom lens I bought it was $35, it's supposed to use 3 AAA batteries and have electronic auto focus but I just use it manually.

  With the 5.5x crop factor this lens is the equivalent of 1100mm zoom so yeah, it needs a tripod without the ibis. Going to do some bird photography this weekend.

  This was a very lazy tripod mount but it works.

  The STL files for above are here. I am working on this list of random lenses I try with the RPi HQ cam including photos/videos. This is my camera/sensor for maybe ever... I've had Sony Alpha cameras and what not but I like designing my own camera bodies/software and I think 12MP is enough if you know how to use it.

• Manual camera settings

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/23/2026 at 00:41 • 0 comments

  I did implement this on the basic-software branch (/pelicam/src/camera)

  I have to watch more videos/learn to see if it's actually working right

  For example in picamer2 ISO isn't a thing apparently, the equivalent is analogue gain

  See this YouTube short

• Scalar Crop

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/22/2026 at 02:37 • 0 comments

  Thanks to the people at Raspberry Pi Forums for chiming in. This way is better than what I was doing before in the past (literally taking small images quickly).

  So yeah I'm still using basic software

  I also added in basic "shake to wake" thing to use the IMU

  I did go out and do some photography. I initially went to this park but it was pretty boring/flat, middle of winter here so everything's brown/dead. This was the best pic I got. I'll have a video out tomorrow.

• Still basic

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/16/2026 at 03:56 • 0 comments

  Was a nice day, went out again

  The code it's using right now is the basic-software-3 branch which is pretty bare-bones and written quickly, hence it was freezing today

  Also got a new tiny camera so I can do POV videos

  I'm already designing a new camera since this one has a flaw where the sensor flange is not adjustable since it's glued to the body. Most of the lenses I use have to be unscrewed (flange distance increased) to focus.

  Also want a simple/easier to hold camera, it'll use the same display as this one the 2.8" Waveshare DSI display.

• First time out

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/08/2026 at 22:51 • 0 comments

  I knew the photos were probably not going to be great, also it's not a great time right now where all the flora is dead. But was still a great day, we were at 9F for a while then today it was low 60F.

  This lens is really cool the Canon TV Zoom 15-75mm. It's so much better in quality than the Rainbow H6mm.

  So yeah I gotta finish making the actual software and get back out there.

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