Open source everything

What should only software be open source? Prof Marc Levoy asked this question and came up with a surprising answer

Linux, at one level, is an exciting idea. It is about software that can be reprogrammed to suit your tastes and choices. And if you take the idea one step further, you may want to ask why make just software open source?
Why not make hardware too open source?



This is what Professor Marc Levoy of Stanford University did. Working with student Andrew Adams, he has created an open source camera called Frankencamera a camera so named because, like Mary Shelley's
protagonist, this camera has been put together from various components, giving it a decidedly ugly look.

Beauty from the beast
But the ugliness of the Frankencamera is only skin deepu2014this is verily the beast that produces beautiful images.
This is because this camera runs Linux and is in a sense the world's first programmable camera.

What can it do? Quite a bit, actually. One example is of the photo of the bridge, in which the camera is able to 'capture pictures of the same scene with different exposures and then to combine them into a composite image in which every pixel is optimally lit' as stanford.edu puts it. While this is possible with PC-based software, the Frankencamera can do it by itself.



Wonderful concept
While the camera is itself a great idea, one wonders what if this thought is taken to other hardware? You will probably then have a programmable fridge or a TV. While already quite a few devices exist that can do this for instance, my set-top box can automatically select a particular channel at a particular time the concept of the Frankencamera can extend this further.



For instance, one could then one day have a fridge that could alert you and tell you that some dish has been left inside for too long, your TV could automatically switch to a business channel if the Sensex falls below a certain limit, your brandy bottle (ok, the intelligent shelf on which the brandy sits) could help you choose ordinary AC brandy for passing acquaintances and premium XO for close chums based on how often the people have come to your house, something that is determined by the intelligent fingerprint reader attached to the doorbell...

It sounds clichu00e9d, but the possibilities are truly endless.

QUICK TAKE
>>Stanford has created a camera called the Frankencamera
>>This has been made from various components
>>It looks ugly, but produces great snaps

The components
>>Motherboard: TI system on a chip
>>OS: Linux
>>Imaging chip: Taken from a Nokia N95 cell phone
>>Lens: Off-the-shelf Canon lenses, combined with actuators to give the camera its fine-grained software control
>>Body: Custom made at Stanford
>>Supported by: Nokia, Adobe, Kodak, HP
Source: www.stanford.edu