PowerCam

The webcam as a power-meter for measuring light intensity

Anyone who needs a sensor to measure the light intensity is looking for an optical power-meter. Devices with a freely positionable sensor head are quite expensive and make experiments on "Malus' Law", Fresnel's formulae or others, where a relative power measurement is absolutely sufficient, more difficult. For this purpose we developed 'PowerCam', where the webcam becomes a simple power meter!

PowerCam is programmed with Python and can be downloaded as executable code, so no Python installation is required. Our software includes:

  • The use of a webcam or C-mount camera (UVC standard) as a "power-meter" for simple experiments
  • The uncalibrated measurement of intensity changes on the image sensor
  • Simple reading of the intensity value, both graphically and quantitatively as a value
  • Live visualisation of the sensor to avoid clipping
  • Saturation warning when the sensor is overloaded and automatic adjustment of sensitivity

Download / Source - Code

The software is subject to the GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. The source code can be found here at GitHub: PowerCam - GitHub Repository

Executable Code:
This version can be executed directly after download and contains all necessary libraries as well as the Python interpreter.