Project NiteVision - NiteMax + HUD + carputer

**Genesisfactor** · 06-13-2006, 06:34 PM

or go on ebay and get them for $80. HMDs are great but, lol, as the girl who decided to jet acros my lane cause she couldn't wait for the guy to turn into the gas station and almost cause a 3 car, GF sandwich, fenderbender, side views are IMPORTANT.

I have my PVR. I'm about to get the rest of my nitemax's and get my Gauge Cluster HUD ready. I'm going to probably install after my car is done, which my mechanic is FINALLY in the middle of, and my screen arrives and is fixed

. This should be interesting. I can't wait to get this adapter. I wonder how my AI will respond to the fact that she can "see" now?

BTW, quantum, i'm workin gon a Near Eye system, and i need to know how t make it focus at like 2 inches form the eye? If i can't figure it out, i'll have to buy and hack apart one of these system.

Congrats on your install!

**shotgunefx** · 06-13-2006, 06:52 PM

An update on the auto-iris, I did a test last week and while it helps, it's not enough. Instead of the giant blinding circle, you get a somewhat smaller oval (narrow horizontally). It's easy enough to verify that it's working by removing the lens and looking through it while changing the amount of light that hits the CCD.

It might be the particulars of how this iris is designed too though. Guess I'll have to read up on those too <*sigh*>

I'll post a cap soon, I had a few pieces of hardware get zapped (UPSes are worthless

) so I'm still a bit out of sorts.

**Silentbob343** · 06-13-2006, 07:29 PM

man nothing is going easy for ya.....

**spaceskater** · 06-13-2006, 07:29 PM

Originally Posted by shotgunefx

An update on the auto-iris, I did a test last week and while it helps, it's not enough. Instead of the giant blinding circle, you get a somewhat smaller oval (narrow horizontally). It's easy enough to verify that it's working by removing the lens and looking through it while changing the amount of light that hits the CCD.

It might be the particulars of how this iris is designed too though. Guess I'll have to read up on those too <*sigh*>

I received my auto-iris lens (same as yours) yesterday. Did some tests indoors and it seams to work but nothing amazing. I'll test it on the road probably today night.

Maybe it's too cheap to make a difference. We'll see. I still have no way of recording anything and it's sooo frustrating. I need some capture devise or a PVR. I'm not sure if pci card would fit in my install so I'll go for something usb.

I also think that if I really am to make anything like a HUD I'll go for the instrument panel like Genesisfactor. I have no place in my dash... It's all one peace and i would have to cut a hole in to it and still I don't think I have the space in depth. Maybe the NiteMax LCD with a nice Fresnel lens on top.

**shotgunefx** · 06-13-2006, 07:36 PM

Originally Posted by spaceskater

I received my auto-iris lens (same as yours) yesterday. Did some tests indoors and it seams to work but nothing amazing. I'll test it on the road probably today night.

Maybe it's too cheap to make a difference. We'll see. I still have no way of recording anything and it's sooo frustrating. I need some capture devise or a PVR. I'm not sure if pci card would fit in my install so I'll go for something usb.

I also think that if I really am to make anything like a HUD I'll go for the instrument panel like Genesisfactor. I have no place in my dash... It's all one peace and i would have to cut a hole in to it and still I don't think I have the space in depth. Maybe the NiteMax LCD with a nice Fresnel lens on top.

I'll have to play with some of the other settings like ALC to see if that helps.

One thing I noticed with that expensive lens is that the iris (not a DC iris, but a signal iris) has a pot to adjust whether it measure average or peaks when driving the iris. They are supposed to get a 9v sigal but I just hooked up the regular video to it and it worked fine, so if they other "feature" settings don't help, we might have some more options for iris-types.

The other thing I noticed is that if the lens is unpowered, it's totally black. You can't see through it at all.

When I tested it with the lens off and was looking through it, it never got totally black. So it's probably capable range-wise for our use, just a matter of getting the CCD to tell it too.

**jarofsonicmen** · 06-13-2006, 08:03 PM

Hmmm. Does anyone have the HUD Combiner piece from Electronics Goldmine? Someone mentioned a color cast...just wondering if it might be dichroic. If you hold it up in front of a test pattern with lots of colors, do they all come through the same?

I guess the simple "LCD with a Fresnel above it" doesn't do a decent job of collimating the light, eh?

**shotgunefx** · 06-13-2006, 09:13 PM

Originally Posted by jarofsonicmen

Hmmm. Does anyone have the HUD Combiner piece from Electronics Goldmine? Someone mentioned a color cast...just wondering if it might be dichroic. If you hold it up in front of a test pattern with lots of colors, do they all come through the same?

I guess the simple "LCD with a Fresnel above it" doesn't do a decent job of collimating the light, eh?

I have it, mine doesn't have a color cast, just looked at an HD test pattern image which has a rainbow and it looked the same through it.

Back on the auto-iris, I think enabling ALC will help

Pin 1 on JP2

JP2-1 AES/ALC AES: Automatic Exposure Control. ALC: Automatic Level Control.

Going by the definition of ALC I found elsewhere...

ALC (Automatic Level Control)
May also be called peak/average control. Adjusting this control allows the auto iris circuitry to adjust for bright or dark spots for the best possible imaging.

I'd do it, but of course after trying to add a dip to all those switches previously, one of the pins was bent a bit, cant' for the life of me get a wire to it, just spent the last hour or so trying. I'm not going to try another crack on another board as I'd have to redo the auto-iris connections too, don't have time right now.

So spaceskater, it's up to you

**spaceskater** · 06-15-2006, 12:55 PM

Update: I've been playing around with all possible futures of the CCD. Unfortunately the ALC has none to negative effect on the image. Basically with the auto-iris lens in operation the ALC has NO effect what so ever, in any lighting conditions. Without the auto-iris lens only when there is a lot of light in the whole image pressing the ALC will saturate the image. It looks like it deactivates the Automatic Level Control. If there is average to low lighting conditions again activating the ALC has NO effect on the output.

Then i thought maybe the ALC input could take a variable voltage input as an adjusting signal but that didn't work either. It functioned as a digital input, below 1.5V it activated, above 1.5V deactivated.

I do have some good new thought. On the CCD board there is a small potentiometer on the side. This controls the auto-iris lens! With no lens it makes NO difference. With the lens it basically adjusts the iris response. It appears to be very sensitive. In max setting the iris is always open, in min iris closed but you can find a good balance in between. Dint expect miracles since the dimes the iris the less the glare but so is the total light the CCD accepts.

Did some field testing last night but didn't really have much time... will do some more soon.

**Genesisfactor** · 06-15-2006, 01:54 PM

yeah, the nitemax has an automatic light control, so i would assume it had something like an autoiris...

Honestly, i'm still trying to figure out why autoiris is needed. Maybe its somethig i haven't observed yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night i'll have the thing in my car to see and play with. I'll record the drive.

I mean, if its the lights and stuff on a dark road, i think a software solution would be in order more than a hardware solution as a software solution could dim only the bright spots using a filter (Gaussian maybe? We breifly went over it in the computer vision section in robotics) while a hardware will dim the entire image.

**shotgunefx** · 06-15-2006, 03:01 PM

Originally Posted by spaceskater

Update: I've been playing around with all possible futures of the CCD. Unfortunately the ALC has none to negative effect on the image. Basically with the auto-iris lens in operation the ALC has NO effect what so ever, in any lighting conditions. Without the auto-iris lens only when there is a lot of light in the whole image pressing the ALC will saturate the image. It looks like it deactivates the Automatic Level Control. If there is average to low lighting conditions again activating the ALC has NO effect on the output.

Then i thought maybe the ALC input could take a variable voltage input as an adjusting signal but that didn't work either. It functioned as a digital input, below 1.5V it activated, above 1.5V deactivated.

I do have some good new thought. On the CCD board there is a small potentiometer on the side. This controls the auto-iris lens! With no lens it makes NO difference. With the lens it basically adjusts the iris response. It appears to be very sensitive. In max setting the iris is always open, in min iris closed but you can find a good balance in between. Dint expect miracles since the dimes the iris the less the glare but so is the total light the CCD accepts.

Did some field testing last night but didn't really have much time... will do some more soon.

Cool on the pot, I was wondering what that was for. BTW, with ALC, you short it to ground IIRC, not put a + voltage to it, maybe that's why?

When the ALC pin was bent (crushed) against the zoom pin, and I zoomed, it worked just like you'd want it to. The glaring ball of light just disappeared and the light fixture itself was easily visible. So they're is something in there at least that's workable.