Helmdar: 3D Scanning Brooklyn on Rollerblades(owentrueblood.com)
141 pointsby todsacerdoti3 days ago10 comments
  • voidUpdate3 days ago
    I've thought about trying to do 3d scanning with a LIDAR module, but they all seem really expensive. Does anyone have a recommendation for a spinning LIDAR module that can be interfaced with by an arduino-style device, rather than USB, that doesn't cost me an arm and a kidney?
    • coder5432 days ago
      I've never actually tried them, but if you google "RPLIDAR", there seem to be some budget-friendly options out there.
    • mlsu2 days ago
      slamtec RPlidar points come in on UART. They are 2D, not 3D.

      You won't be able to do much with the raw data on something with the compute power of an arduino. SLAM takes a lot of compute and memory and compute scales with resolution quickly.

  • maeln3 days ago
    A slight tangent but rollerblades is a case of proprietary eponym : Rollerblade is a brand of inline skates (often call skates - plural - for short) that became so famous people started to use it to describe all inline skates, no matter the brand. Just like vaccum cleaner and hoover :)
    • ghaff2 days ago
      As another tangent, it's a great example of an activity that became very popular for a time and then almost completely faded away for no obvious reason. (If anything, paved rail trails--which are often a great place to inline skate--are much more common today than they were during skating's heyday.)
    • BLKNSLVR2 days ago
      I should attempt to trademark myself as The Rollerbalder.

      (I haven't checked but I'm sure someone else has already used this on all the popular socials)

    • techn003 days ago
      and xerox
      • ioma83 days ago
        and roomba
        • taneq3 days ago
          Thanks, I'll hoover up these examples for later use.
  • iugtmkbdfil8342 days ago
    While it does feel like we are slowly approaching weird mix of "Snowcrash" and "Fringe", I can't help but marvel at how eerily beautiful those scans are. And the worst part is now I wanna try something similar. Is this what normal people call social proof?
  • dllu3 days ago
    I once put an Ouster OS1 on a hat and walked around with it. Pic of me here: [1]

    [1] https://x.com/ddetone/status/1141785696224477184?s=46

    • weinzierl3 days ago
      Very cool. When was this? If you would repeat it, which LIDAR would you use? Is there anything on a generous hobby budget nowadays?
      • dllu3 days ago
        It was at CVPR 2019, a computer vision conference. I may be biased since I used to work at Ouster, but cost notwithstanding, I would definitely pick the OS1 again for its unparalleled number of points per second combined with low weight and decent accuracy.
      • mkarklins3 days ago
        On cheaper side there's MID360
  • fshafique3 days ago
    You should post this on /r/Photogrammetry on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/photogrammetry/
  • condensedcrab3 days ago
    Very impressive! LiDAR and point clouds seem very promising, but the challenge of denoising point clouds and artifacts keep the skill bar very high/time intensive.
  • amelius3 days ago
    Wouldn't this be cheaper with a stereo pair of cameras + software reconstruction instead?
    • SequoiaHope3 days ago
      Actually a single camera is all you need. I think it’s fair to say that the only thing stereo gets you is scale. But both cameras and lidar have their place in sensing systems, and getting more experience with either is useful.

      If you’re interested in reconstruction from images check out Meshroom and Nerf Studio

      https://alicevision.org/

      https://docs.nerf.studio/

      • taneq2 days ago
        Scale is the one thing stereo doesn't get you compared with sequential mono images, unless you have some fancy lens model that lets you derive scale from nonlinearities in the lens. Is that something we do now? I always wanted to try out monocular SLAM with a fisheye lens.
        • Jyaif2 days ago
          With 2 mono images you can figure out that an object is twice as big as an other, but you can't tell the size of any objects (= you don't know the scale).

          With a stereo image you know the distance between the lenses, which allows you to know the size of the objects (= you know the scale).

    • fake-name3 days ago
      That would need WAY more compute.
      • pj_mukh3 days ago
        Also a lot less robust depending on baseline.
        • amelius2 days ago
          There are also advantages, such as that you now also have a map of RGB information corresponding to the depth map.
  • pj_mukh3 days ago
    So cool! I wonder how the Lidar and ARCore poses were cross-calibrated?

    Just to avoid this, I would just use a LiDAR equipped iPhone Pro, with industrial grade cross-calibration and still have all the visualization fun.

  • 3 days ago
    undefined
  • timzaman3 days ago
    Just install polycam and walk around :)