Another project is sitting on the back burner. I scrapped out an old electronic white board, one that you draw on then you can print out what you've drawn. Don't know if it worked or not - but it's been scrapped for metals, electronics and stepper motors. Among the items are what appears to be a couple microphones (no idea why it would have them) and what appeared to be a camera. I was convinced it was until I took that apart. Your thoughts? Opinions?

 

Yep Camera, it's got horizontal and vertical alignment..

 

But that chip in the last photo doesn't look like any kind of vertical. Am I missing something?

 

Some of the very early handheld scanners had a single line detector that one moved slowly down a page.

 

Imagine a regular white board. Now put that camera at the top looking down across the board. Add to that two things that look like microphones, one in each upper corner. Each of these units have a diode in a metal casing with a window (opening - not glass). I can't for the life of me imagine how that might work. At first I thought those microphones were some sort of infra-red light emitting elements and the light reflected back indicated the position of a dry erase marker. But testing them with the scope showed that they generated a signal when a sharp sound was present and close by.

So that may be a scanner you think?

 

There are ultrasonic smart whiteboards that use an infrared pen. That sort of fits this set of things.

 

Ultrasonic transceivers? I recall using a digitizing tablet in the late 80's to analyze x-ray films. It had a pair of them at the top and a pen with a push-button switch that indicated when it was depressed. The tablet would send out the x,y coordinates each time the pen was pushed down on the tablet surface.

In this case, it's possible the camera was used to indicate a "pen down" condition with the transceivers giving x,y coordinates.

 

Could be. Thanks. I guess there's not going to be much use for it. Scrap bin for sure. The power supply is the next thing I have to figure out - but power supplies are not an urgent need. I have several to dink around with.