This should help to document the motivation and needs for the outdoor Omni-Directional Video Sensor (ODVS) housing for use in our current research. This project has been done with a lot of assistance from the CVRR team as well as UCSD Facilities, Scripps, and outside companies. We would like to sincerely thank all those who have helped along the way. Brett Hall was the lead on the 1st ODVS, Nivedan Tiwari did some mechanical design, and Ofer Achler is responsible for the 2nd outdoor ODVS.

Motivation:
In order to do research on traffic conditions for the Caltrans ATON project and other current CVRR projects, we have a need for several ODVS sensors mounted outside near a roadway in order to develop and test our software under real conditions. In our first permanent installation these sensors will be mounted on lightpoles off of Matthews Lane near the Price center on UCSD campus. This will give us a view of the busy area near the bus stop where cars, buses, and people all are active regularly. Since these cameras will be outside and need to be operational 24hrs/day, they should be protected against the elements (rain, fog, wind, etc.). Since they will be remote and rather high off the ground, it is appropriate to make the system capable of operation for long periods of time (months hopefully) without intervention (cleaning, repositioning, etc).

• Weather resistant (sun, rain, wind, etc)
• Capable of stand-alone operation for long periods of time
• Maintain camera electronics at operating temperature 50°C
• Non-fogging window

From a preliminary analysis, the temperature in a sealed enclosure of the approximate size that we are using should not exceed 50°C even on sunny days. The housings will not use any active heat dissipation. The Sony EVI-370 camera block is built for use in camcorders, so it is probably ready to withstand the extra heat of being outdoors.

For this project, we are relying upon sensors Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro at the Kyoto University has custom built for us. These are Hyperboloidal Omnidirectional mirrors used with the SONY EVI-370 camera. Here are the zipped camera drivers (since the camera is now discontinued) just in case you need them. You can research more about the mirrors at Accowle Co. Ltd.

October 10, 2001

In addition to the existing ODVS outdoor installation being very stable for the better part of a year, The next generation of the ODVS Housing has been built and installed, thanks to Ofer Achler and his coordination with the machine shop at Scripps and the technicians that helped us get all the new equipment up and mounted. The new housing looks really good, and roughly follows one of the alternate designs that we had initially made.

The design of this housing is basically all inside of a thick plexiglass tube with O-ring seals on the end-caps. It was beautifully (and very quickly) made by the Scripps shop, with only general directions. The resulting housing has been mounted on a lightpole near the first one, and has a great view of the area around it. The wiring from the camera to the base of the pole was done using Ofer's innovative use of (inexpensive) Cat-5 cable to send the video, power, and serial signals. This allows use of simple hardware that is easy to build and maintain. You can see a detail of the wiring harness in the last picture.

The 1st housing has also been modified with a "roof" mounted on it, so that at night the overhead light doesn't distort the picture as much and it's better shaded during the day also. You can see the live view from the new camera here.

January 10, 2001

Thanks to a lot of work and coordination with electrician crews, the ODVS is installed and working in it's housing outdoors. It's time to put the housing to a test, and see how it does.

The weather has been very wet lately (for San Diego anyway) and some moisture is visible condensing on the windows. Additionally the camera really needs some kind of a roof to block the view of the sky (day) or light (night) from the camera so the auto-iris doesn't wipe out the image.You can also view the image online.

Sept. 19, 2000

Once again, Mr. Sikri from the California Acrylic & Glass Mirror Plate company has been very helpful. We now have an environmentally sealed housing for the ODVS built out of a combination of acrylic and aluminum. It has sealed flanges, to keep the moisture out and will have an airtight connector installed at the bottom for the cables to penetrate out of the enclosure. We have not yet tested it outdoors, but that is in the works to do soon. This design looks sturdy and weatherproof, but outdoor testing will be the real test.

July 28, 2000

We have recieved a prototype that Aashwini Sikri at the California Acrylic & Glass Mirror Plate company was kind enough to build for us out of acrylic pieces. It looks excellent, the next step are some small design changes and finalizing the details like connectors, seals, etc. This version is not weatherproof, so that has not been tested yet. However it is well designed with water-resistance in mind. Also, the image through the plexiglass looks fine. When built out of metal the design should prove to be strong, robust, and easy to maintain.