If You Have A Phone And An eora 3D Scanner, You Have A Virtual Model Studio
Once upon a time, the minds behind eora 3D wanted just one thing in all the world: an affordable, impressively accurate 3D scanner. Well, if nobody makes just what you want or need, just go build it yourself.
When eora 3D set their minds to it, the result was the world’s first and only high-precision 3D scanner to convert digitally captured real-world objects and surfaces into remarkably detailed three-dimensional models with the affordable power of a smartphone.
The driving proposition behind the eora 3D High-Precision Scanner was fairly simple: anything a $15,000 handheld projected light scanner or stationary traditional flat-bed/turntable scanner could do, a normally cost-prohibitive green laser’s incredible accuracy could do better and at a lower cost with a smartphone to provide the convenient power and interface. Like human eyes, digital camera CMOS sensors are doubly as sensitive to the green light spectrum as they are to a standard consumer 3D scanner’s red-spectrum laser.
For starters, that advantage makes a small, portable green-laser scanner that much more versatile in all lighting conditions both indoors and out, and in the eora 3D High-Precision 3D Scanner’s case, with the costs normally invested in cameras and processors instead redirected toward more finely tuned app algorithms and laser optics.
Precision and ease of use were the uncompromised leading goals in the project’s development. It had to be fast, it had to be portable, and it had to be affordable. Adapting the scanner for companionship with a smartphone slashed the part-count and freed up countless power and optic-oriented resources to perfect the green laser itself. The resulting Android and iOS-compatible peripheral connects by way of Bluetooth 4.0 and is driven by the free app available via the Google Play and iOS App stores to deliver full-color models onscreen from scans up to a range of 1 meter (3 feet) with unheard-of sub-100-microns precision.
That extrapolated to a 1-square-meter field of view from a standard smartphone’s camera in a single scan. Through the app, user can weave multiple scans of larger objects together into a single image or just use any compatible desktop image-editing software.
The eora 3D also includes a 1/4″ – 20 UNC thread in the bottom of scanner that secures it quickly and easily to any standard tripod. The eora 3D also sets itself apart by operating perfectly without the turntable other 3D laser scanners employ. The app has no trouble cobbling together various angles to compose a full model from the stitched together images without a turntable, but since having one on hand drastically simplifies scanning smaller objects, an optional wireless turntable is connectible by Bluetooth for versatility’s sake. Once set up, scanning, uploading and sharing 3D models is as simple as the push of a single button in the app.
With 25 days to go in eora 3D’s Kickstarter campaign as of Oct. 24, 1,372 backers have pledged a combined $386,370 to fund a mass release of the scanner, obliterating the original $80,000 goal.
