Taking Pictures with an LED

In this video, I show that LEDs can work in reverse. They’re designed to emit light, but they can detect it too, like a mini solar cell.. So I decided to see if one could be used as a single pixel camera. To my surprise, the signals from an RGB LED were distinguishable enough to be used as a crude color sensor! Using a “raster scan” method, I was able to form colored images one pixel at a time, using my 3d printer as the scanner.

There’s another, more interesting way to form images with a single pixel camera, and it doesn’t require any moving parts at all! ‪@okooptics‬ demonstrated and explained this method well on his channel.

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Forrest M. Mimms (not sure of the spelling) had this in one of his project books. I still have the old book somewhere, I loved that guy! I learned so much from him and his projects.

After working on his LED project, I started grinding the tops off of them, and drilling tiny holes in the epoxy to inset a fiber optic. Fun stuff when you’re 21 and moving up…

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Hi there,

Between, him and HealthKit’s , it was a GREAT era!
I miss my Olsen Electronics Shop, used to be…
We could go in for a tube machine run, and they ALWAYS had a “Grab box” small box for 5 and some for 10 (bigger) inside was all kind of , stuff, CAPS ,inductors, (with mili-Henry’s) Resistors , TO20 giant power transistors ,little signal xformersa, a Grab bag of crap, I probably still have some in my shed…
:grin:
I got a 555 timer and things were Never the same … LOL :folded_hands:

Cool stuff.
GL :slight_smile: PJ :v:

Yeah… that’s how I “got the bug”, Heathkit.

I used to take stuff apart, everything… even the components, looking inside etc… My folks said, “well, maybe if we got him something to put together, he’d stop taking everything apart”. And that was it. Never stopped.

We had a place here, Delta Electonics. OMG what a great place! Tons of used stuff and overstock. DL1416 displays were my fav…

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Hi there,

No tech advice TLDR, warning!!!

O H’ Hell, reminds me of a story, My pops just bought these intercoms that use the AC wall plug for the connection, We had one in each kids room, (7) 3 boy 4 girls (3 kids rooms). you could press talk and hear it all through out the house , upstairs and down. the Kitchen had the MASTER (blaster unit) :grin:

Anyway they went out to eat and I took the master and my rooms unit apart just to Observe :crossed_fingers: I spread everything out on the kitchen table.
My pops was not pleased when they got home needless to say" WTH ? they are Brand New…and you better get them back together and the better work or else no bike for a week, (honda 50 I rode to school) :face_with_peeking_eye:

took me an hour but , they worked again and , he was Slightly amused. :squinting_face_with_tongue:

Now Decades later We all 3 brothers are known for taking stuff apart, but only one doesn’t ever put it back together “carmen” :face_savoring_food:

My pops set me up to learn and love electronics Technology.
It’s kept me and mi|ne just fine. :v:

GL :slight_smile: PJ :v:

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we used to have dumpsters where you put trash… we were dumping trash and found an arcade game next to the dumpster… we took it home… i had no idea how to fix it… and probably lucky i didnt electracute myself… but took it apart… and eventually took it back to the dumpster… in smaller pieces.. lol

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Oh man, I had access to the BEST “trash”…

My dad was in the army, Enginner. So some of the stuff he worked on, or the people that worked for him, worked on… I had amazing stuff. The guys working for him, were always giving him boxes of stuff to take him to me.

Mostly at a place called Vint Hill Farms Station and Redstone Arsenal. So lots of radio type stuff from Vint Hill and rocket type stuff (much better electronics) from Redstone. A friend and I used to go to this dump they had at Vint Hill, and we could find all kinds of old computer bits and tapes. The computer bit, were probably (way) old technology flip-flops, with tubes. Old card cage type things, looked like maybe one or two flip-flops to a cage. I wish I still had them… History.

one of my friends dad worked at NASA… we did electrolysis on water and made hydrogen & chlorine gas… You could smell the success… lol I wish we had a youtube channel back then