m463 27 minutes ago

When I read the title I thought of another IDEA that I've had bumping around in my head that would be pretty cool.

Put down two model railroad straightaways next to each other, with two locomotives, use them as a base to attach a 3d-printer arm across and "print" a model railroad diorama, incrementally moving the locomotives to print each slice.

In other words, a flatbed 3d printer where one axis is the locomotives moving across your railroad layout. I think it could rejuvenate model railroads if you could print mountains, towns, streambeds, roads, etc...

Terr_ 23 minutes ago

Random thought: If you stick a very small adhesive mirror to the outside window before boarding, then footage "looking down" at the regularly-spaced railroad ties could contribute to information about the current speed and acceleration.

Well, on a straight section anyway, if you turn, the inner/outer edges will appear differently-spaced...

jo-m 1 hour ago
  • contr-error 1 hour ago

    The former is in the prior art section at 2:24!

  • m463 32 minutes ago

    I've played with panorama mode and tried both of these (1 - panorama of moving train passing platform, 2 - panorama out window of a moving train)

    ...and both got the same weird artifacts, as it piled "similar" slices together then jumbled up "complex" slices.

    Too bad they can't have a toggle for time-slice based panorama vs scene-based panorama. or maybe turn on accelerometer optimizations or not.

ted_dunning 1 hour ago

It would have been pretty easy to use a horizontal line scanner to get image speed.

In any case, it seems that using a full frame video would be much easier to post process since frame to frame correlation tells you everything you need to know about motion.

  • xnx 1 hour ago

    One of the first scripts I vibecoded did exactly this. It works well, but is limited by framerate when there's high motion.

  • leni536 1 hour ago

    I'm not sure that video would have been easier to postprocess. At what fps and shutter speed?

  • mikewarot 6 minutes ago

    The first attempt was with video, but she later switched to exactly that, a 19000 lines per second 2048 pixel line scan imager. It was augmented with 6dof acceleration/gyro sensor, gps, and microcontroller to get the data to a laptop.

sciencesama 1 hour ago

they need to connect with the skunkworks team, they solved this problem on sr 71 long time back !

lalalandland 2 hours ago

Using the camera as a scanner has a long history in satellite cameras and other aerial photography