Design deficiencies

As I sit here trying to get my Eora to calibrate (1MP took four attempts before it succeeded, I'm on my second attempt at 8MP, which is sloooww...) I have discovered a couple of design deficiencies in the scanner.

First, it runs the battery down on my phone really fast. My phone went from about 90% to 30% in the space of four calibration attempts and one attempt to scan an object.

Second, when you elevate your phone so you can plug in its charging cable, the phone is held so far away from the Eora by the clamp arm that its weight causes the Eora to tip over. Naturally, I DON'T have a tripod handy here at my desk. Having a not-plugged-in phone resting on the desk at the same level as the Eora seems quite natural, but the moment you need to raise the phone to plug in the charger...ugh. It looks like I'm going to have to make a flat base I can attach the Eora to with a 1/4-20 screw for desktop/tabletop use.

If I want to get really fancy, I suppose I could router a groove into this base for the phone's charging cable.

The battery problem is probably due to missing software optimizations. This is an early beta version of the app and I'm sure this can be improved if there is a will to do it. Let's hope and see.

The clamp arm is askew on my scanner. It's sort of "hanging" down some degrees. I think I'll have to open the scanner and see if I can fix this somehow so the phone will be aligned exactly vertical and parallel to the scanner.

You could always get one of these. I have 3 for just random things if needed and my phone is actually charging while in use during scanning.

my arm was loose on my unit. I tightened it up and tried to see if that was part of the issue. and i think it actually is.

from what I can tell, 3 things need to be gyroscopic leveled. the laser, and the phone need to be gyroscopic level to each other. and then during calibration the board also needs to be gyroscopic level to the eora/phone. installing a leveling app showed that my phone was not gyroscopic leveled. But the issue is that we need a gyroscopic sensor on the eora to know if it is level as well. So in theory your table also needs to be level as well.

How did you tighten up the arm? Did you open the scanner?

BigTP25 wrote:You could always get one of these. I have 3 for just random things if needed and my phone is actually charging while in use during scanning.

Plugging the phone in to power isn't really what I'm complaining about. I'm complaining that the Eora only uses the phone in one orientation, sitting right on top of the phone's charging port when you have the Eora sitting on a table. If you raise the phone to accommodate the charging cable, the arm the holds the phone holds it far enough away from the Eora to tip it over. Raising the phone might also throw the calibration off, for all I know. And letting the phone rest on the curvature of the charging cable isn't good for the charging cable, either.