Thomas Megel's OpenScan 3D Scanner Gets Support for Arducam's New 16MP Autofocus Camera Module

Thomas Megel's OpenScan project, which turns a Raspberry Pi and connected camera into a low-cost 3D scanner, has received an upgrade adding support Arducam's latest high-resolution autofocus camera module — boosting the quality of the resulting model.

"I have been working on low budget and open source 3D scanning for several years," Megel says, "and got really excited when Arducam introduced a very high quality, low price camera module for the Raspberry Pi — currently $15 on Indiegogo. It took me an evening to get the first rough sketch + interface running. But after almost two months of tinkering, I finally released the beta firmware a couple of days ago."

The OpenScan project uses photogrammetry, where a series of two-dimensional photographs can be used to built a 3D model of an object. A year ago Megel showed off a version of the project, which could scan to a 10-micron accuracy using the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module — and this new release, using the Arducam 16MP Autofocus Camera, should be able to improve the resulting model quality still further.

"The main issue with the stock [Raspberry Pi] cameras was setting the focus," Megel explains. "In theory, it is possible to manually set the focus, but the process is very finicky and might even be annoying to some. So, here comes the new camera with autofocus/software controllable focus. Once the device took the photoset, it can be processed locally using some freeware like Meshroom, VisualSFM, Colmap or similar.

"Alternatively, I have created a cloud-based rendering solution, as those photogrammetry programs easily occupy your whole computing resources for several minutes to hours," Megel adds. "I am so lucky, that over the time, the number of people supporting the project steadily grew, so that I am able to host the OpenScanCloud as free/donation based service, that is open to anyone."

The latest OpenScan2 beta with Arducam 16MP Autofocus Camera support is available from the project's GitHub repository under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3. Those with non-Arducam cameras, however, are advised to stick with the latest stable release.