note on Lytro Illum
Due to its high price tag, Lytro Illum is currently not on my shopping list. I might be able to ensure the software works with it though, as long as someone shares pictures taken by it.
the camera
My camera model is A1 (reported as F1 by firmware, which likely stands for Firefly model codename). Several colours were made:
February 2012
October 2012
November 2013
Pretty good start is the specification available at lytro.com/camera/specs.
The missing pieces are:
| ISO Sensitivity range: | 75 — 3200 | (both manual and automatic)¹ |
| Shutter Speed range: | 8 — 1/250 | (automatic 2.66 — 1/250)² |
¹ the value 75 is incorrectly reported as 80 on the display in newer firmwares
² the range used to be 1/16 — 1/250 in older firmwares
inside cut
This was a part of the Science Inside page at Lytro web site:
Let's identify the circuit boards as well:
| S | Sensor Board
Revision A6
Contains a CMOS sensor with microlens array (MLA). The microlenses are arranged hexagonally, with rows being the major axis. All microlenses are of the same focal length, with the pitch of 13.89 μm and placed at 25 μm in front of the sensor. Note that the MLA is not parallel to the sensor edge — in case of my camera, the rotation is close to ‑0.006 rad, which makes the most top right microlens to be in the third row at the left side. The captured image consists of roughly 328 × 393.6 ≈ 129,100 microlenses.
The sensor is Aptina MT9F002 14.4 Mpx 1/2.3” sensor (effective imaging area 6.14 × 4.6 mm) with 1.4 μm pixel size. The output frame size is, however, cropped to 3,280 × 3,280 pixels which gives about 10.7 Mpx at 12‑bit resolution.
There is a standard Bayer color filter array (CFA) over the sensor to capture the colors, i.e. data from the sensor are grayscale and it must be demosaiced to get the color information back. It has the R,GR:GB,B pattern with blue being the top left pixel as shown at the side.
Finally, a 3-axis accelerometer is onboard. |
|---|
| U | USB Board
Revision A6
This board contains a Micro USB female connector at the bottom, the shutter button at the top and a piezzo buzzer, which is not enabled in current firmware.
|
|---|
| B | Battery
Model No DC-A950 by FORMOSA, 3.7V⎓ 2100mAh 7.77Wh Li-ion
The calibration measurements are:
Working current: -0.2670 A
Working voltage: 3.67 V
Power Consumption: -990.8 mW
Charge current: 1.0210 A
Temperature: 27.4 C |
|---|
| M | Main Board
Revision A6
This is the main processing board of the camera. On the front side:
SAMSUNG NAND FLASH memory (8/16 GB)
On the back side:
Zoran‘s Camera On A Chip 32-bit RISC digital image processor (part № ZORAN ZR364246BGCG)
SK Hynix DDR2 SDRAM memory (1 GB, part № H5PS1GB63EFR)
Temperature sensor |
|---|
| L | LCD Board
Revision A6
There is a Marvell‘s Avastar 88W8787A16 SoC offering WiFi 802.11a/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0+HS, and FM radio with RDS and transmit capability on the back side of this board.
|
|---|
| D | Display
1.52” touch-enabled, back-lit LCD display
The resolution of the display is 128 × 128 pixels. The touch circuit is on the back side of the display. |
|---|
| C | Cap Slider
This is the zoom slider on top of the camera. It consists of 5 capacitive sensors.
|
|---|
| A | Antenna
Standard pigtail connector, 5 cm. Connected to the LCD Board to support the wireless module. |
|---|
| O | Lens
The manufacturer of the lens is kept secret. The distance from exit pupil to microlenses is 28.1 mm. There is also a second temperature sensor on the lens. |
|---|
You should also definitely check out the official illustration published in The New York Times and the cut in Wired magazine.
camera disassembly
The lightfield-forum.com contains couple of articles on the camera diassembly
(part 1,
part 2,
part 3), credited to Joshua Reich (slideshare, tumblr) and ewolfy, and a
video by Jason Wolf.
All these are destructive instructions, though — but you need to begin somewhere.
That being said, I have seen some attempts that could have been smarter, so some tips just in case:
- As already noted couple of times, the front cover (under which the screws are) holds on a double-sided adhesive tape. Warm the front of the camera and it comes off much easier, almost no violence is needed.
- Check some of the pictures from people who have been there. It makes absolutely no sense trying to remove the cover from the outer edge, that only damages the casing as well as the cover. Use the gap between the cover and the main lens. It might be easier using thin, flat food knife of larger surface (it is easier to scratch the glass and damage the tape using screwdriver).
- The connectors that hold the flat ribbon cables have locks (the brown parts). Just lift them up and the cables come out without friction. Good luck putting them back, however!
- One of the ribbon cables is soldered to the board next to the connector. Be prepared that you won't be able to separate the two parts without soldering or plucking it off.
- You just need 8 screws to get the inner back part out of the rubber case. Just push it a bit from inside, which allows you then to tilt the USB board in order to remove it from the USB port and shutter button holes. Afterwards continue pushing.
- The zoom sensor is also sticked using double-sided adhesive tape. Once the display comes off enough, you can use the knife or other tool of your choice to slide in and help to free it. You can also use the space between the sensor and display to lever the rest out instead of pushing.
- The three screws on the lens half are calibrated and sealed with silicone. Once you unsrcew those, you won't be able to get nice pictures again without recalibration and you will loose resolution and focus range. Creative mode seems to deal with it with brave on the camera, but nevertheless the actual resolution on desktop is going to be pretty bad.
- The camera works opened too.
Broken camera? Donate it!
oet exhibits
The Office of Engineering and Technology at Federal Communications Commission has published documents required for the approval of the camera. Lytro's grantee code is ZMQ, and the assigned FCC ID is unsurprisingly ZMQA1.
The reason it had to be approved is that it contains the wireless chips as already noted. The documents are:
For your convenience, here are all the photographs of EUT:
According to FCC rules, Block Diagram, Schematics and Operational Description of the camera remain permanently secret.
patents
The assignee of U. S. Patent 7,936,392 is The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
(2005/9/30) 
Imaging arrangements and methods therefor
Patents granted to Lytro, Inc:
| (2007/11/30) | Interactive refocusing of electronic images |
| (2009/11/20) | System and method for acquiring, editing, generating and outputting video data |
| (2009/11/20) | System and method for video refocusing |
| (2009/12/8) | Light field data acquisition devices, and methods of using and manufacturing same |
| (2011/2/5) | 3D light field cameras, images and files, and methods of using, operating, processing and viewing same |
| (2011/4/27) | Camera |
| (2011/6/8) | Storage and transmission of pictures including multiple frames |
| (2012/1/31) | Downsampling light field images |
| (2012/6/14) | Selective transmission of image data based on device attributes |
| (2012/9/4) | Light field data acquisition |
| (2012/11/6) | Parallax and/or three-dimensional effects for thumbnail image displays |
| (2012/7/27) | Optical assembly including plenoptic microlens array |
| (2012/7/31) | Generating and outputting video data from refocusable light field video data |
| (2012/9/4) | Light field data acquisition |
| (2012/10/31) | Light field camera image, file and configuration data, and methods of using, storing and communicating same |
| (2013/2/22) | Compensating for variation in microlens position during light-field image processing |
| (2013/2/22) | Light-field processing and analysis, camera control, and user interfaces and interaction on light-field capture devices |
| (2013/2/22) | Compensating for sensor saturation and microlens modulation during light-field image processing |
| (2013/4/22) | Acquiring, editing, generating and outputting video data |
| (2013/5/6) | Optimization of optical systems for improved light field capture and manipulation |
| (2013/9/10) | Interactive refocusing of electronics images |
| (2013/9/20) | Video refocusing |
| (2013/10/10) | Configuring two-dimensional image processing based on light-field parameters |
Pending applications for patents:
(2013/11/14) Optimization of optical systems for improved light field capture and manipulation
Disclaimer: Jan Kučera and miloush.net are not affiliated with or endorsed by Lytro, Inc. and the above information is not confirmed.