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• Fun time out with the cam

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 05/25/2026 at 21:15 • 0 comments

  This thing is such a conversation starter, like people recognize my designs cuz I gave the drummer my modular pi cam. The black modular pi cam with interchangeable sensor. I also donated the orange camera so that was kind of cool, it was put on an art auction. It was bought for $15 lol nobody really wanted it ahh well. I also had to write a manual which is funny "how to SFTP the files" kind of deal.

  I'll post a video later, this camera has no mic so I used my phone as a mic/have to merge em together.

• Flowers

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 05/02/2026 at 00:51 • 0 comments

  These images/videos were taken with this camera (HQ cam sensor) and Bell Howell 17mm super comat cine lens.

  Example still
  

  The sensor without calibration seems to favor green/orange colors, blue was alright although that can be problematic. It has the most problem with bright pink/towards red. You can correct these/tune but yeah I haven't done that.

• The list is complete... (for now)

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 04/25/2026 at 02:30 • 0 comments

  So I did kind of go overboard and start buying a lot of lenses. I actually have more (of the CCTV ones) but a lot of these below are vintage/cine c-mount lenses. One is a full-sized lens with an adapter. I accidentally bought an 8mm wide angle Canon lens but it was for an SLR so I could not get it to focus unfortunately.

  Been going out and taking pics with this camera.

  Here's a cool photo of me taking a pic of a heron in a tree.

  Which unfortunately did not turn out that great of a picture on the big screen.

  I tried to do my first motion photos (long exposure) and they didn't turn out that great dang.

  Here's the video of today's outing.

• 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

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