gigapixel imageBot

This thing is a set of tools to help adapt a makerbot or other 3-axis CNC machine into a gigapixel imageBot. This is an extension of the Explorable Microscopy project. http://www.explorablemicroscopy.org/

Some example images:
720 megapixel Arduino http://gigapan.org/gigapans/77742/
200 megapixel Crab shell http://gigapan.org/gigapans/78874/
60 megapixel fly http://gigapan.org/gigapans/79492/

The goal is to make the generation of very very large, explorable images, as simple as possible, bringing this technique to more people. An important aspect of this goal is to make as few modifications to the equipment as possible.

The idea here is to capture thousands of images of a single subject in a 3D array, then merge these images into a single explorable image which can be viewed online using the free gigapixel image sharing site, http://www.gigapan.org . The process is broken up into four steps:

• Image capture - automatic capture of thousands of images in a 3D array.
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