Arducam 16mp camera calibration distance?

[alphabeta77 (D O)]

Hi all,

Looking to build an enclosure for my LM3 (850mm x 400mm), so wanting to get a decent camera.

Obviously don’t want to be limited in accuracy by resolution and a lot of posts seem to be pointing to the 16mb Arducam as a top end option, eg:

16MP Arducam: Pattern NOT Found

The 1.0.0.10 update “Custom Camera” didn’t work for me. Well it starts, but after about 30 sec the live camera feed crashes and displays a fixed junk noise pattern until LB is rebooted. Default Camera system still works. I realized the problem when looking for test burn lines on wood right next to the white posterboard- the burn lines on darker plywood weren’t any blacker, but far, far more visible. Just don’t use white posterboard, use any color but white or black. It is extremely hard to …

However the Lightburn software seems to be a bit limited in that the distance calculator only allows for lower res cameras (eg 5mp or 8mp) to calculate the right distance.

So I guess question 1:
Is it worth the 8mp to 16mp upgrade? I want to be able to precisely align things on my bed, so don’t want blurry pixels to be a problem.

Question 2:
How can I calculate the right height for the 16mp camera and my bed? (I’ll need to order off Aliexpress, so if I know the correct height, I can build the enclosure while I wait a few weeks for delivery)

Thanks!

[Dannym (Danny Miller)]

Don’t bother calculating the height, do the Varifocal build. That adds a lot of effective resolution by allowing you to zoom in the limits of the field of view to match the limits of the bed

[alphabeta77 (D O)]

Sorry, what does this mean? If I’m building an enclosure, do I not need to know how high to make the lid to ensure the camera can see the whole bed?!