DIY Laser levelling using webcam and laser level

[devmonkey]

Great little project, right up my street! You're making a good amount of progress in a short time as well!

I would have started with a simplistic full-width half-max of the profile, but Gaussian fitting is probably better and more noise tolerant (but as you say, more complex!).

I assume you're summing the image across the horizontal. r.e. rolling shutter, might be helpful to perform some frame averaging?

Out of interest, whats the cost of the laser? I can see it replacing a DTI and precision straight edge, and being very useful for performing the measurements in the same plane.

I think the laser cost about £100 but you can buy the same thing on amazon without the pendulum for £5 see here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Focusable-L...dp/B07PVPT44K/
Also they sell units like mine from non-brands for about £20-£30, would do extactly the same job.

Yes frame averaging would maybe help a bit although it is pretty stable. I could take a moving average of the gaussian beam centre to stop it wobbling too much as you slide it around, can do anything to the software really.

The major unknown at the moment is how straight the line from the line generator in the laser actually is, I expect it is pretty good over the 30 degrees or so we would need, I can't test this until I have the sensor mounted in a decent fixture. Any ideas how to test this without a precision straight edge would be much appreciated.