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Railway network as flatbed scanner
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
An engineer used a Basler ruL2048-19gm linear camera to scan landscapes from trains and ferries.
The project turns moving vehicles into giant flatbed scanners, capturing ultra-wide images.
Background
The project was developed by an independent hardware developer (Philo) who mounted an industrial linear scanning camera on trains and ferries. The camera captures a single vertical line at a time, and as the vehicle moves, these lines are stitched together to form a complete image. The developer overcame challenges like speed variation using accelerometer and GPS data.
How it unfolded
- Feb 2026Took a 56,894x2,048 pixel grayscale image on the San Francisco to Oakland ferry.
- Aug 17, 2026Published a 4,600-word blog post detailing the project.
- Aug 18, 2026The story gained traction on Hacker News and other platforms.
Who’s saying what
- Developer
- The developer believes the results speak for themselves after overcoming significant challenges.
- Community
- Hacker News users upvoted the story, showing interest in the technical achievement.
Still unverified
The exact camera model and specifications are from the developer's blog post, which is a single source.