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This app converts the TOF sensor from the mobile device to a night vision camera

English - August 7, 2019

Image 1. This app converts the TOF sensor from the mobile device to a night vision camera

The sensor TOF are in fashion in the mobile premium, as a system super-fast to calculate depth and focus, with other applications that are more mundane as scanning of 3D objects, but what we didn’t know is that served night vision, more or less.

This is possible installing the free app Night Vision / ToF Viewer, available on Google Play. This app uses the API Camera2 in Android to get data from the TOF sensor and represent them with a kind of vision of what Predator. We tested it, and it works.

kind of A mixture of Terminator and Predator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZtLVnDtxyU

The application has two main requirements: that your mobile has TOF sensor and which includes support for the API Camera2 Android. The first thing you probably know it is one of the standout specifications, but the second is not so common.

Image 2. This app converts the TOF sensor from the mobile device to a night vision camera

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Taking into account that the easiest way to test if your mobile supports Camera2 API is to install an app such as Camera2 API Probe to test, almost you can save a step and directly install Night Vision / TOF Viewer.

If you do not have support, it will not work or directly will not allow you to install it from Google Play.

The app itself is extremely simple, to the point that you don’t need to do anything and you only have one option: the resolution. In our test in a Huawei P30 Pro only two resolutions were available: 240 x 180 20 x 15.

Image 3. This app converts the TOF sensor from the mobile device to a night vision camera

This low resolution gives the image a certain tone of Pixel Art, accentuated by the use of color to the thermal imaging camera. Even with all, the result is quite good, bearing in mind that the pictures above have been taken in complete darkness. The colors, by the way, are not random. The red represents the depth information, the green information “in confidence” and the blue-edge detection.

Image 4. This app converts the TOF sensor from the mobile device to a night vision camera

Night Vision / ToF Viewer

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The news This app converts the TOF sensor from the mobile device to a night vision camera was originally published in Xataka Android by Ivan Ramirez.

Xataka Android