Hardware Project: Refining a Multispectral Imaging System
Team
Sean McIntyre, Johannes Giorgis, Matisse Milovich, Paul Villers
Introduction
Background
The goal of this project was to build a multispectral imaging system based on a rotating color filter wheel and monochrome camera. Our system components were not connected physically or electronically before we started. The first phase of the project was to design and build two adapters to fix the camera and lens on either side of the rotating filter wheel. The adapters we designed place the camera and lens as close as possible to the rotating filter wheel, to change the distance between lens and camera sensor as little as possible. The second phase of the project was to automate the photo acquisition: capturing images, rotating the filter wheel, and saving images. The automation significantly reduces the amount of human labor as well as acquisition time to capture a series of images.
Project Description
To build a multispectral imaging system based on a rotating color filter wheel and monochrome camera. The system will be used to capture images of paintings in the Cantor Arts museum.
Design Specifications
The project had two principal design specifications. The first is to use mechanical adaptors in the lens - filter - camera system to ensure that light entering through the lens would be filtered before reaching the sensor. The second is to implement an automated photo-capture system via communication between a computer, Arduino and the camera.
Adaptors
Automated photo-capture
Components
- Point Grey monochromatic camera with c-mount threading, USB port, GPIO port
- Wavelength-specific filters, each with c-mount threading
- Edmund optics Intelligent Filter Wheel (FW) with control box and housing
- Arduino Mega 2560 Board
- PC with FlyCap software and SDK