Project Gigapixel
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
One of this author’s first jobs was scanning film transparencies for a publishing company, and using an early version of Photoshop to edit out the scratches that had been caused by the transparencies having been kept in a shoebox seemingly full of grit. The scanner in question was a large box containing, among other things, a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) optical sensor. It was slow and fiddly, but in the early 2000s it was still better than the digital cameras of the time.
A quick intro to Python – short scripts, rapid results.
In the quest for ever greater image resolution, some enterprising hardware hackers have tried taking the CCDs out of scanners and repackaging them into high-resolution, though bulky cameras. With this project Yannick is going several steps further than this, by reverse-engineering the CCD so that a Raspberry Pi 5 can interface with the sensor assembly directly, replacing all other components of the original scanner with a custom implementation – including a snazzy 3D printed body.
Features Editor Andrew trawls the internet for Cool Stuff while keeping the magazine running smoothly.
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