German engineer Gaurav Singh has designed and built an industrial USB box camera in a custom 3D-printed case that not only accepts interchangeable lenses, but the image sensor can also be swapped out as needed.
The latest in a long line of DIY camera projects from the electronics, software, FPGA and embedded design engineer sees the electronics split across three 27 x 27-mm (1 x 1-in), six-layer circuit boards bolted to each other.
The project schematic shows the single camera board produced so far as compatible with Sony IMX290, IMX327 and IMX462 1/2.8-inch CMOS image sensors for 2-MP stills or 1080p video possibilities. But the camera board is interchangeable, allowing for modular flexibility. Indeed, Singh appears to have used an IMX219 sensor from a Raspberry Pi camera module for his working prototype and notes that there's "not much image processing going on on the camera die it self."
That's where the PCB array's USB 3.0 Type-C board comes in, which allows for connection to a computer for control and processing, while also providing power to the electronics. The final piece of the circuit board puzzle is a FPGA core board with 32 MB of RAM and some flash memory storage that's sandwiched between the camera board and the USB board and facilitates communication between them.
The stacked board array has been mounted to a 3D-printed enclosure which sports a bought-in aluminum CS-to-C lens ring for attaching any C-mount lens.
This fascinating build is open-source and the design files and source code are available on Github under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Source: Circuit Valley via Hackster.io
