Can anyone tell me how those ‘intelligent’ auto-orientation devices work in digital cameras? I mean the mechanism whereby the cameras automatically figure out which way they’re being held and rotate the image so that it’s right side up. If it works by gravity, is it like a 3D gimballed pendulum microswitch or something? I just cant find any specs or info on these things anywhere…
(apologies if this question has been asked before but I’m new here and I cant seem to get the search function to work)
Well, it would be a colorful solution but in fact I was just taking a wild guess I like your mercury switch idea though. simple, reliable, it would make sense. Can anyone confirm that this is how they do it? (In the back of my mind I was kind of thinking they might be doing something really clever and elaborate with GPS and the earth’s magnetic field or something. I think Im probably being led astray by the fact that a lot of camera blurbs claim that this feature is ‘intelligent’.)
I don’t have an answer but I’d be suprised if the orientation switches had any moving parts as that may be less reliable so pendulums or mercury switches would be out. A small mass with some piezoelectric sensors would easily do the trick. That or a tiny man with a plumb bob and some fine sisal twine.
OK google searches (eg try ‘mercury switch camera auto-orientation’) pretty much confirm that the simple elegant solution (ie the mercury switch idea) is the one that’s actually being used. Whereas, not surprisingly, the more ‘colorful’ solutions with gyros and gimballs etc etc must be too complex, expensive and/or cumbersome for use in digital cameras. Padeye, I think the ‘small mass with piezoelectric sensors’ idea essentially would have to involve moving parts, even if the actual movement would be very constrained. Even so, for this application, that would probably be the next best way to go if there were no such thing as mercury switches.
Anyways… thanks everyone, I guess this case is closed!
Not so fast. How does a piezoelectric sensor involve moving parts? Yes, there is a minute, microscopic deformation of the crystal but it senses pressure, not displacement.
OK Im still here! Well, apart from the microscopic deformation, which already makes it an electromechanical device in my book (as opposed to say a common-or-garden memory chip or something), surely there would have to be an armature with, as you said, a small mass at the end to apply the pressure? And the small mass would have to be free to move (pretty much by definition; otherwise how is any pressure to be applied to the piezo device?) so that’s a small but macroscopic moving part right there, yes?
Incidentally, as long as Im posting again, a friend of mine gave me this link to how segways work. I cant make head nor tail of their explanation of traditional gyroscopes, but the stuff about solid state coriolis force(!?!) gyroscopes is pretty cool. I had no idea such things even existed!
I like your mercury switch idea though. simple, reliable, it would make sense. Can anyone confirm that this is how they do it? (In the back of my mind I was kind of thinking they might be doing something really clever and elaborate with GPS and the earth’s magnetic field or something. I think Im probably being led astray by the fact that a lot of camera blurbs claim that this feature is ‘intelligent’.)