gilestrolab / ethoscope

a platform from monitoring animal behaviour in real time from a raspberry pi
http://lab.gilest.ro/ethoscope/
GNU General Public License v3.0
17 stars 25 forks source link

Dimmer image on PI4 under IR lights. #197

Open ggilestro opened 1 week ago

ggilestro commented 1 week ago

The image captured by the PI4 under IR illumination may be too dim for tracking.

image

At first I suspected a software issues, because the PI4 image uses picamera2 instead of the legacy camera but no changes to image acquisition can fix that. I now suspect the reason has to do with how the IR strip is powered. The PI4 is more power-hungry and does not leave enough current to flow through the 5V pin of the GPIO, which results in dimmer IR illumination.

If that was the case, it would mean a different wiring is required. A solution could be to power everything from a dock, as investigated here.