In my research of 3D scanners I kinda decided that I’d like to have a bank of cameras that took simultaneous pictures from multiple angles. However, that’s expensive and difficult to coordinate from a technical perspective. That is until Richard from the Netherlands thought to use a networked bank of Raspberry pis with camera modules. They receive a network message, snap a picture, and store it in dropbox for processing with your choice of processing software.
It’s an amazing setup and only costs… well, $60 per pi/camera plus the rest of the hardware. So for 40 of them that’s a cool $2400. I’d probably start with 16, so it would only cost me… hmm, carry the 1… youch… $1000 to get started. Plus there’s the fact that there’s a bank of fully functional computers there that aren’t doing anything but take a picture. Seems a waste. I’d want to hook them up to do cryptography in their off time or something. Could a minecraft server be distributed?
Of course if I took it to fairs I could probably make back the cost of it in no time. So I just need to get me some angel capital… and free time. But it’s encouraging to know what it’ll take.
