Project NiteVision - NiteMax + HUD + carputer

**shotgunefx** · 06-04-2006, 02:40 AM

Originally Posted by Silentbob343

I hear you brother I always have moments like those when messing with projects. Whether working on my car, gun, or some sort of electronics it never fails, something stupid happens and makes me want to take a hammer to it. Keep with it though, and it'll work out in the end. You've done some great work so far and now you need to put it all together.

Yeah, just really aggravated. I hit that a lot, with most things.

It got worse. So as I start to solder the wires to the pads, I find the crimps. Great!, these things are miniscule. You drop one and it's just gone.

[img]http://www.leeland.net/lib/leeland/****ccd3.jpg[/img]

My little pliers were gargantuan for the task. 3 of them went pretty easy, of course the 4th one was a ***** for some reason (always a catch).

So I mount them in the socket, put little nibs of plastic between the pins to keep them from touching and glue the **** out of it.

I go to hook it up and realize, like an idiot, I glued it into the wrong 4 header post. $#$@!*$#@!*!@#!!

So I decided to call it a night and head to the bar. Feel much better now

**Silentbob343** · 06-04-2006, 02:46 AM

Originally Posted by shotgunefx

Yeah, just really aggravated. I hit that a lot, with most things.

It got worse. So as I start to solder the wires to the pads, I find the crimps. Great!, these things are miniscule. You drop one and it's just gone. My little pliers were gargantuan for the task. 3 of them went pretty easy, of course the 4th one was a ***** for some reason (always a catch).

So I mount them in the socket, put little nibs of plastic between the pins to keep them from touching and glue the **** out of it.

I go to hook it up and realize, like an idiot, I glued it into the wrong 4 header post. $#$@!*$#@!*!@#!!

So I decided to call it a night and head to the bar. Feel much better now

Glad your feeling better, sometimes you just need to step away and forget about it for a bit.

**shotgunefx** · 06-04-2006, 05:10 PM

Ok,

So tried again today. *****ing ridiculous. After ten times, I could not repeat me success at getting the tiny crimps on.

So I went to try and solder them, but pretty much impossible a second time due to residue from the first, etc.

I tried wirewrapping. Not enough room, but I wrapped it onto a header pin, then backed it off a bit and removed it from the regular header and carefully placed it over the pico header. Almost worked but I could keep all four on to secure it, one would always slide off.

After a rampage or two, I had an idea. I have a ton of molex SL connectors. They are similar but much bigger. The opening is narrower than a KK crimp, but still a lot bigger than the picoblade crimps.

So I attached some crimps with some heatshrink over that (to keep the pins from touching when placed on the board) and then used a pair of pliers to make the opening a slit. Worked perfect.

Then I doused the pins on the board in hot glue so they won't slide off or short. The camera is working fine (except it appears the lens or CCD now has some dirt embedded which results in some small spots in the picture).

I'm going to try and clean them up and should have some video tonight.

**Silentbob343** · 06-04-2006, 05:42 PM

Great news. Looking forward to the video, put the new Merc. S class in it's place

.

**shotgunefx** · 06-04-2006, 08:01 PM

Originally Posted by Silentbob343

Great news. Looking forward to the video, put the new Merc. S class in it's place

.

Well, there's good news and bad.

I'm starting to think a proper HUD isn't going to be workable. Not a projected one anyway.

In doing some tests, the lens itself is highly visible on the collimnator. Much more so then the actually projected image.

All the aftermarket huds you see are just basically LCDs or VFDs reflected off the windsheild.

That's fine for "gauges". You have to refocus your eyes, but it's no different then traditional gauges as you have to look down and refocus.

But for something like a video feed that your going to look at a lot, I think it's got to be focused at or near infinity to not be a dangerous distraction. How you can project an image like that, without having the projector itself reflecting as well, I have no idea.

I'm not saying it's not possible, just probably too hard for most of us. Any optics experts around here?

**Silentbob343** · 06-04-2006, 09:05 PM

Originally Posted by shotgunefx

Well, there's good news and bad.

I'm starting to think a proper HUD isn't going to be workable. Not a projected one anyway.

In doing some tests, the lens itself is highly visible on the collimnator. Much more so then the actually projected image.

All the aftermarket huds you see are just basically LCDs or VFDs reflected off the windsheild.

That's fine for "gauges". You have to refocus your eyes, but it's no different then traditional gauges as you have to look down and refocus.

But for something like a video feed that your going to look at a lot, I think it's got to be focused at or near infinity to not be a dangerous distraction. How you can project an image like that, without having the projector itself reflecting as well, I have no idea.

I'm not saying it's not possible, just probably too hard for most of us. Any optics experts around here?

hmmm, the new Merc has LCD screen in the dash behind the steering wheel that displays the gauges, speedo etc, and is replaced with a video feed from the camera when NV is turned on.
In-Car H.U.D Video, interesting concept displays on a different piece of glass like in planes. He did a "How To" for a UK computer mag as well:
http://www.jasonbradbury.com/jason_b...d_video_1.html

"He gives you the whole design on the video, really.
Piece of plastic held over a TFT or whatever at a 45 degree angle. You want to be sure you use proper sizes, etc. Based on the video, it's a CD player case, so about 13cm to the side. Based on that the screen should be around a 3"x5" or so(7.62cmx13cm or whatever, perhaps smaller).What you could do is recess it into your dash, run the cabling, and then build a mounting bracket above the screen, maybe with a protractor to insure 45 degrees. 45 degrees is good because one quarter of the light goes through, one quarter straight back at the display and one half straight at you. Great design mate! I'm American but I would like to buy you a pint because you have clarified how to do it so well."

The Cadillac system was projected on to the windhshield, do you happen to know what method/materials they used?
http://www.marlow.com/Applications/D...ion_system.htm
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2071139
Here is a guy who owned an 01 DTS with night vision. He removed the system to put in a custom mesh grill. Perhaps he has some knowledge of how the image was projected on to the windshield.
In my searches an article kept popping up from a 1998 erdition of Advanced Imaging magazine, but they were all pay to download links. Don't know if it would have anything relevant to help with the HUD problem.
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/bibli...2-1595951059-0

Haven't found any specifics..."The other part of the package is a Head-Up Display (HUD) projector, mounted in the instrument panel behind the steering wheel. It takes aim at a small, half-mirrored section of the windshield just below the driver's main line of sight."
"The display

http://autoweb.drive.com.au/cms/A_50...wsarticle.html
"an active matrix liquid crystal display IJIJD (head up display).
The head-up display (HUD) is integrated into the dash in front of the driver. The HUD projects a virtual image near the front edge of the hood having a horizontal field of view of 11 degrees and a vertical field of view of 4 degrees. The image-to-object ratio remains at about one-to-one. Keeping the image near life-size helped the driver related objects in the HUD image with objects in the forward road scene. It also helps the driver judge the distance to an object.

A HUD helps allow the driver to maintain head and eye positions to view the road and the display simultaneously. The HiUD, producing a virtual image, has the advantage of providing an image that is at far-field focus and, therefore, does not require the driver to refocus his eyes as the eyes move to the display and returns to the driving scene."

List of display technologies:
http://bg.advancedimagingmag.com/buy...atCodeParam=09
Thin sheet optic+holographic diffuser, really neat PDF something ford did with the Navy for better night vision systems. Clearly shows the advancements made from the Cadillac system:
http://www.onr.navy.mil/about/confer...nning_gwot.pdf
How GM is doing their HUD display actually in between the glass:
http://www.dupont.com/safetyglass/en...ts/hud_gm.html
Tein's concept and I just thought they did shocks, ahh VSD is really just a "super bright" VFD:
http://www.tein.com/defi/vsd_top.html

**shotgunefx** · 06-04-2006, 10:08 PM

The Bradbury take is easy but problematic.

He's just having it reflect off a piece of plastic. The problem is that if you want to superimpose graphics over the road as opposed to just reflecting it, you need to focus the image. Otherwise, to look at the display, the road ahead will be out of focus to your eyes. It would be really no different than having an lcd sticking out of your dash and looking at that.

For this route, I'd forget about the 2.5" lcd and look at a PSOne 5" screen.

I don't think it's impossible by any means to correctly project it, but the more I read, the more it looks like there's going to be a lot of heavy lifting as far as optically designing something which is certainly over my head.

Here's some more links that have tidbits on the caddy system.

http://www.jkllamps.com/caseStudies/...seFamily&id=31
http://www.sbir.com/target_projectors.htm#custom
http://www2.dupont.com/Automotive/en...s/case178.html

If you look at the first pic on the carrier you linked to, you can see the tiny little projector at the bottom of the hud glass. It appears to be projected straight forward. With the constraints of the dashboard, most of us are going to need to have the image source in the dash and reflected off the collimnator. I think this is were it gets tough.

Though now that I think about it, I had a sony camcorder that broke but I took the parts off it before I tossed it. It has a minutare lcd in the eyepiece, probably about the same size as a regular CCD camera. If I could figure out how to drive it, I could probably just use it like a camera in reverse and project it forward using an adjustable Cs-mount lens. Hmmm

BTW, here's a good link on aircraft huds.
http://www.ausairpower.net/TE-Fighter-Cockpits.html

**shotgunefx** · 06-04-2006, 10:30 PM

Here's a pic of the camera board with the SL connectors for the IRIS.

Here's the sony cam's mini lcd I was talking about.

**Silentbob343** · 06-04-2006, 11:59 PM

Originally Posted by shotgunefx

Though now that I think about it, I had a sony camcorder that broke but I took the parts off it before I tossed it. It has a minutare lcd in the eyepiece, probably about the same size as a regular CCD camera. If I could figure out how to drive it, I could probably just use it like a camera in reverse and project it forward using an adjustable Cs-mount lens. Hmmm

That looks like an interesting solution, it will be a mini LCD projector.

**shotgunefx** · 06-05-2006, 12:19 AM

Originally Posted by Silentbob343

That looks like an interesting solution, it will be a mini LCD projector.

It almost looks like a CRT, but I'm not sure. The package is fairly long and the tube it's in is basically a wire wrap. I believe there was a sticker on the inside that said something about "X-Rays" when I opened it the first time