DIY Laser levelling using webcam and laser level

[John McNamara]

Hi Devmonkey

I have been discussing alignment with a good mate who is planning a very nice servo driven router, he may pop in here. We built an arduino driven device to sense a stretched wire buy mechanical contact. He did the electronics I did the mechanical s. Being driven by the arduino we were able to cycle it thousands of times. the attached dial indicator never varied by more than a couple of tenths 90% of the time. occasionally there was an error probably caused by a dirty contact. or maybe some mechanical stiction.

The software looked for a break of contact. First finding the wire on contact then slowly moving away.
A couple of times per cycle.

The mechanical system used a 10:1 lever, a flexure and a stepper driven with 4:1 reduction M8 (1.25mm pitch) screw drive. It was accurate to better than .0001"

I would like to try using a webcam as you have described instead of the electrical contact and compare the results. Being non contact it should not have the dirty contact issues.

I would love to try the software you have worked on if you are willing to share it? . Is it running on a PC? or a micro?

Regards
John

This photo is a little unclear. I still have the unit I will take some better photos. It was made from scrap material I had to hand as a test of concept only prototype.