Bar code readers hacked for distance information?

[venethios]

Hi everyone!

This might be a weird question, but I'm looking for the absolute cheapest, yet reliable way of scanning the surface of a 3D object in an art installation. Basically I need to retrieve the surface "depth" data, or how "jagged" the surface is. Kind of like a 3D scanner.

So until now I've been testing with a Sharp distance sensor, which is pretty good, but has two major drawbacks:

1. It's not very accurate. And I need to filter the data stream to get smooth, meaningful data.
2. It's a black box in that I have no idea which point exactly it's scanning in its vertical range.

The actual question is: Could I in any way hack a cheap laser (or CCD) barcode reader to return an array of distance values for the currently scanned line? The idea is, if it measures the intensity of the reflected laser beams, wouldn't that work to determine how far they must have travelled?

I know this is a long shot, and there's a difference between measuring response time and feedback beam intensity (barcode readers probably do the latter), but I'd be really grateful for any kind of feedback or ideas on this matter.


Thanks a lot!!

 

[Anon_LG]

On what scale are the art installations? What will the difference between "deepest" and "shallowest" of the art approximately (nm, mm, cm?)?

 

[venethios]

This is still under consideration but generally I think it will be in the range of mm, maybe a couple of cm.