Hak5 Missile Range Finding

[jzman]

In the show Darren just talked about adding range finding to the missile laser setup. And just last summer a friend came up to me and asked for a cheap laser range finding solution for a project that he currently had, so i did some research and found this http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~twd25/webcam_laser_ranger.html . This allows you to get a pretty accurate range with a very cheap setup. Basically you have a laser perfectly parallel to the camera. The software gets the distance of the laser dot from the center of the image, in pixels. And with basic calibration you could have a laser rangfindinger setup in a matter of no time. Also the better the camera is or the more mega pixels the camera can shoot at, a better distance accuracy can be achieved with larger range finding capabilities. If you have a very cheap camera, you might also be able to put a lens in front of the camera, as long as the lens doesn't distort the image and then you could calibrate the software according to the lens, then you could obtain higher range measurements, but you wont be able to view near ranges. So check it out, the link again is:

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~twd25/webcam_laser_ranger.html

[DingleBerries]

I just set up a webcam security system in my dorm... this would be a nice geeky addon, if i can get a pic stepper and a controller i could rotate the camera(via serial) and have the range displayed below the live feed. Ahh the possibilities.

[jzman]

Ive used this in a robot that i built for a friend, it worked out great and was really cool.