Raspberry Pi based inspection camera

[Leiothrix]

I saw Dave's recent mailbag video which had an inspection camera in it and figured I would show off what I have made as a much better alternative.

It is a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the HQ camera and a 10-55mm lens.   The lens has focus, zoom and aperture controls, and it is on a vertical stage for extra adjustment.

It is mounted on some Arca-Swiss rails so it can slide out from the shelf to the working position and slide back when not in use.  The shelf is mounted on the wall so it doesn't shake at all when you bump the table like the ones mounted on a retort do.

The Pi boots up into the camera application and is on a read-only filesystem so it can just be powered on and off from the power switch.  One could write a quick Python script to save photos at a button press, but I haven't gotten around to it

It runs at 50fps and I don't have any trouble with motion blur or lag for soldering underneath it.  And as you can see from the ruler the working height is around 28cm, so very easy to work under.

The board pictured is 80mm x 20mm, and the components on the screen are 0805 and 0402.  The monitor itself is 24" 1080p.

The lighting could be a bit better, I plan on getting a pair of lights on goose necks and mounting them to the camera rail.  It could also do with an enclosure around the camera and to be generally neatened up a bit, but that's a job for the future.

Just figured I would share as it might inspire someone to do something similar.

[RoGeorge]

Nice setup. 

[Bryn]

Nice setup. 

Was going to say the exact thing 😅

[bostonman]

That looks good.

Do you have a list of parts you used such as the camera and/or a link to where you got the idea from?

Saving photos would be great too. I don't know Python, but I think saving photos can come in handy.

[Leiothrix]

The list of parts is roughly:

• Raspberry Pi 3B+.  It's what I had, I'm sure other variants will be fine too.
• Raspberry Pi HQ Camera
• 20cm CSI cable for camera
• 10-55mm lens with aperture control.  The one I got was https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006808578387.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.76.18fb1802IPYBC8
• Arca-Swiss 120mm clamp to hold the rail to the shelf
• Arca-Swiss 300mm rail
• Arca-Swiss 90 degree double clamp
• Arca-Swiss 115mm adjustable stage

The Arca-Swiss stuff is on Aliexpress as well, and I had some lying around from use with my camera.

The zoom range on the lens is perfect for what I want, and one can do digital zoom with the camera software as well.

I got the idea from looking at the preexisting digital microscopes like the one that was in the recent mailbag video.  I had also seen a couple of other projects but they were also using microscope lenses with terrible working distances.

I didn't like their working distance and didn't want to risk spending $300 or so on some electronics at something like Aliexpress.   I think this works better than most of them as it is much more flexible in what it can do and doesn't shake at all thanks to being wall mounted.

And thanks to the Pi being a general purpose computer with accessible GPIO ports you can easily make it have a user interface that does whatever you want it to do.