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• Still basic

  Jacob David C Cunningham • a day ago • 0 comments

  Was a nice day, went out again

  The code it's using right now is the basic-software-3 branch which is pretty bare-bones and written quickly, hence it was freezing today

  Also got a new tiny camera so I can do POV videos

  I'm already designing a new camera since this one has a flaw where the sensor flange is not adjustable since it's glued to the body. Most of the lenses I use have to be unscrewed (flange distance increased) to focus.

  Also want a simple/easier to hold camera, it'll use the same display as this one the 2.8" Waveshare DSI display.

• First time out

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/08/2026 at 22:51 • 0 comments

  I knew the photos were probably not going to be great, also it's not a great time right now where all the flora is dead. But was still a great day, we were at 9F for a while then today it was low 60F.

  This lens is really cool the Canon TV Zoom 15-75mm. It's so much better in quality than the Rainbow H6mm.

  So yeah I gotta finish making the actual software and get back out there.

• Quick photography software

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/08/2026 at 05:53 • 0 comments

  Tomorrow's gonna be a great day weather wise

  Wanted to get out there, so I put together some minimal code which does:

  • live camera passthrough
  • button interfacing
  • taking and viewing photos
  • display on small OLED

  It's funny this top OLED doesn't really have a use yet but it looks cool.

  In this photo here I had the blue and red switched around (OpenCV thing) so I later did fix that

  The code is pretty bad but it'll work for tomorrow see the video and repo

  https://github.com/jdc-cunningham/pelicam/tree/basic-software (I will move this to the JDC34 camera repo)
  

• Tsk tsk

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/05/2026 at 04:22 • 0 comments

  Recursion still a problem lol, how hard can it be?! Traversing a nested object... anyway I'll fix that.

  Next update will be working with the hardware eg. consuming this JSON menu structure.

• Recursion

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/04/2026 at 02:25 • 0 comments

  So made some more progress, I was really trying to bust out this menu builder over the weekend but I got hung up on traversing the nested menu tree.

  With the tool above I have to reproduce this existing menu system (a little outdated).

  Then of course the icons have to be bounded to sub-menu scenes or hardware functions.

  Can see my stream of consciousness devlog here.

  I will point out, I'm trying to get the major functionality/features built out, doing it in broad strokes so it's not gonna be 100% perfect for now because I really want to get a working camera software and get out there with this camera.

• Drag n' drop

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 02/01/2026 at 01:35 • 0 comments

  Early update but I had to stop today when I got hung up on recursive traversing lol, I've done it before but was doing it near the end of day/burnt.

  This will be a desktop (electron) app.

  The "T" is a text box, still have to add that functionality in.

  So on the right there will be a nested menu similar to website menus that have nesting.

  And the end goal is they produced a nested JSON tree that defines a menu scene, with icon bindings (whether navigating to a sub-menu "clicking in" or running a hardware function)

  That's an old JSON structure but it'll work like that.

• Formiddable

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 01/30/2026 at 04:48 • 0 comments

  At this point I'm primarily focusing on the software. Right now I'm developing this drag-drop nested-menu-scene builder where each scene is defined in JSON. Most of this stuff/kind of development I already know how to do. I just need to sit down and do it like tomorrow after work and this weekend.

  I did this yesterday pretty fun drag-drop. I have to do the snap-grid next and other things. It will be interesting how to do the nesting/function binding, I have ideas. Button binding too wrt to the desktop app and dynamic camera form factors. I will test it on my 3 other cameras I developed in the past.

  Oh I took this pic of the family, missing the modular pi cam

• Systemd

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 01/24/2026 at 00:10 • 0 comments

  Runs openbox to show the OpenCV menu

• Assembled

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 01/20/2026 at 05:28 • 0 comments

  I was in a hurry to print this thing and there were a lot of small errors, like parts that are not thick enough to be strong eg. screw mounts. But it's real!

  The green is growing on me. I thought it'd be ugly as hell, probably is in the daylight. But it's cool, unique.
  

• Printing...

  Jacob David C Cunningham • 01/19/2026 at 00:25 • 0 comments

  Yeah these pieces are pretty complicated/need a lot of support. The front half takes 13.5 hrs to print and the back half takes 11 hrs to print plus the display holder which is another 2 hrs to print.

  I've already interfaced with all the electronics see below.

  So it's a matter of assembling it once I have the plastic parts printed out.

  It does look a lot different from what I initially imagined. I had to conform to the part dimensions.

  Also I did change my mind later and wanted something that looked like this:

  With an emphasis on the tiny vintate cine lenses.

  But yeah it ended up looking bulbous which is from using SketchUp as it's hard to design round things. Anyway this camera will use an updated menu I'm working on. Which uses JSON-based menu interfaces and state-rendering like React. That's what I say anyway, that's just the visual aspect, I have to port the current camera code over to Pelicam. I recently added shutter delay for telephoto.

  I've been buying a lot of random old C-mount lenses it's been fun.

  Recently I took this one out.

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