Sebastian Korczak hacked together a 360° rotating 3D scanner using little more than a record turntable modified with Arduino, digital camera, and a laser pointer. Korczak’s laser was mated with a special lens to create a linear beam. The distortion of this beam as it scanned the room coupled with the video data is put into a Python script, which outputs a point cloud of whatever is scanned. In this manner he is able to get full real-time scans of entire rooms. Fortunately for us, he’s provided extensive documentation on his homepage.

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