{"id":293,"date":"2023-05-25T06:58:19","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T05:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/?p=293"},"modified":"2023-05-25T06:58:36","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T05:58:36","slug":"retroreflector-bee-tracking-components","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/?p=293","title":{"rendered":"Retroreflector Bee Tracking Components"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are the 3d design files, PCB files, links to code, etc.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_294\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-294\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-294\" src=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-21-39-300x211.png\" alt=\"3d model of bee tracking system\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" srcset=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-21-39-300x211.png 300w, http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-21-39-768x540.png 768w, http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-21-39.png 932w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-294\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">3d model of bee tracking system<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Note: these were all made &#8220;for my own use&#8221;: In particular the 3d models are really awkwardly put together (first time I played with freecad).<\/p>\n<p>The circuit\/PCB includes components for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>measuring the battery voltages<\/li>\n<li>driving the stepper motor (to turn the platform).<\/li>\n<li>controlling and triggering the camera\/flashes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is likely most people only want the last of these.<\/p>\n<p>The logic here is that a trigger is sent to the camera. The camera itself has a &#8216;flash trigger&#8217; it sends back. I then AND this (using a 7408 quad-AND chip) with four flash-selection signals, from the pi. This is because I wanted to control which flashes fired. These then operate 4 transistors which trigger the four flashes.<\/p>\n<p>The best way to approach using the tracking idea, is probably to just build your own solution from scratch, using the general principles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A global-electronic shutter, so that you can adjust the exposure to match the flash<\/li>\n<li>Subtracting frames, and then using a bit of logic to try to remove false-positives:\n<ul>\n<li>Most FPs seem to be &#8216;blurry&#8217; large blobs (the tags, if the camera is focused are sharp points).\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_295\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-295\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-295\" src=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-35-30-300x300.png\" alt=\"PCB layout\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-35-30-300x300.png 300w, http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-35-30-150x150.png 150w, http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-35-30-768x768.png 768w, http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-35-30-100x100.png 100w, http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screenshot-from-2023-05-25-06-35-30.png 817w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-295\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">PCB layout<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>\n<li>Consider only considering a true-positive if you have seen a bee in 2-3 images in the same part of the image.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Triggering &#8211; I use a transistor to do this. I wonder if there are modules that convert from a pi&#8217;s GPIO to trigger a flash&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m afraid I&#8217;ve not looked into raspberry&#8217;s new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raspberrypi.com\/products\/raspberry-pi-global-shutter-camera\/\">global electronic shutter camera<\/a>. But this sounds really like a good direction in future: Currently there&#8217;s a lot of faff and low reliability around dealing with the cameras I used (the ethernet connection to the camera, the annoying hirose connector, the 12V+ the camera needs etc).<\/p>\n<h3>Files:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>pcb\/circuit schematic: <a href=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/random\/schematic_and_pcb.zip\">link<\/a>. (created with kicad).<\/li>\n<li>3d model of tracking system: <a href=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/random\/box8.FCStd\">link<\/a>. (created with freecad).<\/li>\n<li>The bee_track python module is on github. See README for install notes. <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/lionfish0\/bee_track\">link<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are the 3d design files, PCB files, links to code, etc. Note: these were all made &#8220;for my own use&#8221;: In particular the 3d models are really awkwardly put together (first time I played with freecad). The circuit\/PCB includes components for: measuring the battery voltages driving the stepper motor (to turn the platform). controlling &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/?p=293\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Retroreflector Bee Tracking Components&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaeltsmith.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}