Capturing Images of Insects in Flight

This project was created in order to take pictures of insects in flight using an additional optical lens system to peek for insects in focus.

If there are objects in focus, the system requires only 40usec for checking as it works on reflected light. This eliminates the use of laser beams and long arms are not required for putting the receivers on the top of the system. As a result, between insects and camera is a free full distance. By using a simple potentiometer, the sensitivity can be adjusted as it works even in full bright sun or in full dark. Extra 2-4 high power LEDs are added in order to work in full dark. Since UV light attracts some insects in flight, two of the high power LEDs are UV LEDs with 405nm rating.

Every value cab be used to adjust the focus distance. At a distance of 700mm from the camera, a very narrow 0.1 to 2mm is the focus range of the detector so it can easily detect objects of 2mm diameter. The 4 lasers used include 2 × 10mw green laser and 2 IR 5mw laser at 850nm.

Rest of the project