Hi I've got a really interesting industry bit of kit for you today. and no, it's not a 1980s arcade machine or computer, even though you might think so with this funky joystick here. So what is this weird bit of Kit Well, it's called. wait for it, an Auto Refractor Keratometer Gesundheit Auto Refractor Keratometer or Keratameter for those Keratamita Fanboys And what does this thing do? Well, you might have I Guess that it has something to do with Optometry something to do with measurement of the eyes and indeed it is.

This is an industry standard bidder kit for your optometrist or your ophthalmologist. They can use this better kit to measure the refractive error of your eye and hence whether you're a short-sighted and farsighted and what, uh, prescription you're going to need for your Googles here to correct your eyesight. And yeah, mine's just like old age related bloody YouTube's done it to me. and this keratimeter is actually better than a regular Auto refractor.

A regular Auto refractor will do exactly what I said. It'll measure the error in your eye and whether you're short or long-sided and how to correct uh for that. but this one actually also the keratameter part of the auto reflector keratimeter, the keratimeter part that actually measures the curvature of your Cordia as well. So this actually is two instruments in one basically.

So this is uh, my Optometrist I showed this to my uh optometrist who's also a researcher optometrist and he said yeah, this is a real cool bit of Kit Although it's very old, a lot of uh pioneering eye research was actually done. a lot of published papers and everything for research was done with this particular bit of Kit This particular model is an Envision K of 5001 made by a Japanese company called Shin Nippon Now it's a Wrexham company or everything I Don't know whatever they're buying each other out, but this is an old video kit I Don't know what the date of this thing is, but it has an Rs-232 serial port on it, so like a D25. None of that. D9 Rubbish.

So um yeah, I think it's a tattle, but anyway, it does have newfangled things like a 5.6 inch color LCD screen that allows you to actually uh, the the optometrist to actually view the eyeball and view the pupil. And you can measure your pupil size and you can do all sorts of things and what it does is basically just bounces infrared light off the back of the eye out. and from that you can actually measure all this sub stuff, you know I'm sure there's a lot of science uh involved in it, but it's basically got a camera in the bottom with an infrared light source that can pulse into your eye and that can reflect off the back of your eyeball. and uh yeah, and you just look through here and this one because I got it at auction.

It's missing the Uh stem which comes out here with like a focus chart. You put like a focus chart at a certain distance and then you ask the patient to like focus on the card at a distance and the uh, this is an auto model so it does like you shouldn't even, you know, just line it up. But and that's what this joystick physically does. This joystick doesn't actually do anything electronic.

it's actually I can simply move this platform like this, forward, back, left and right. But the joystick just allows a little fine adjustment like that. and it's got a little fire button on the top. but it actually works without the fire button.

it actually. um, it does all the measurements automatically. It'll determine when the eye is open, it's correct, you know, alignment and everything else. but yeah, basically.

um, this is just for the optometrist to align your eye and then you can shift it left and right. Uh, I of course. and it's just got a chin bar attachment. I'll show you in a minute on the back and uh, Bob's your uncle it? um, it spits out a measurement of your eyeball.

Let's give it a go now. remember kids, don't try this at home. Don't stare into dodgy Optometry equipment you got at the auction. but I'm a professional.

trust me. let's go now. I Don't entirely know what I'm doing here, but I'm going to give it a go. so tongue at the right angle and I've got external monitor here because it's got a video output so you can see what the screens seeing and I can actually align my eye.

So I'm the optometrist staring at this screen on the other side here and I'm going to measure myself left and right eye. So let's start with the Uh right eye here and let's adjust this. There's my eye. There's my eyeball.

So what I want to do is I want to adjust the height here. It's out of focus. I'm going to move it back until it's in Focus Okay, it's in Focus Now just the height and I probably need to stop talking too. That white circle is to measure my cornea curvature of my cornea.

Boom. Look at that. So I've done eyeballs left and right there and we gotta print out. So I haven't actually done a full test here.

This is only a partial Uh test result. although I have done the right and left eye here. this is just the Uh keratometry uh reading. So basically the curvature of my uh cornea.

this doesn't include the uh Auto uh refractor measurements would which would be another measurement and doesn't measure my Uh pupil distance as well I Just haven't gone that far in the Uh testing yet. But yeah, so this is the Uh, the curvature of my cornea and it takes a couple of readings here for both the right and the left eye and it did these automatically as you hopefully saw there and it gives you an average value. Now this is actually a direct measurement in millimeters, but also gives you a result in Diopters as well. If you're a Diopter, uh Fanboy and well, I won't uh, pretend to be able to properly interpret these I'd have to get my Uh optometrist hands up, leave it in the comments down below.

If you'd like me to get an actual tour of my optometrists state-of-the-art facility and also you know, talking about all the weird and wonderful gadgets and how they work, that'll be, leave it in the comments down below. I think I could arrange that actually? Um, yeah. so anyway, left and right eye here and it gives you an average value in Diopters and whatever I don't know. Um, turns out I have an eyeball but uh yeah, it can do much more and if I can find the uh, extra data, I'll included here as well.

All right, let's have a look at this bad boy. It's so big I can't uh My Lens just doesn't uh do it any justice. So it's pretty darn heavy too. The only Uh interface on it is down here.

We've got a Uh Mains We've got a video. A composite video out might be able to get greater resolution than what we get on that piddly little 320 by 240 screen or whatever it is. Um Power some fuses and the Rs-232 with these. Oh, with the original protective cover and of course all the best stuffs made in.

Japan On the back here you can see that it's just got an adjustable uh chin thing so you put your chin on here, you put your forehead against there and you can just move that up and down to get your eye to the right height and inside there you can see there's a 45 degree glass sheet so that's what bounces the light up and then into your eye and then back down. and there looks like to be two slots there. I Don't know if they're but I don't know, it jumped like we'll find out when we take it apart I guess But yeah, it's basically on camera Optics and everything else and just the mirror to uh, bounce it and then you can obviously see through for the chart. And of course here's a photo of a modern one.

They don't actually have the uh chart anymore like it's all built in. Um, so you just stare into the thing and they've got little uh projection cameras in there that can you know project targets or whatever you want to have to stare at at whatever distance and she nipples and actually call this an auto ref keratometer. but basically Auto Refractor. That ref means refractor and some manufacturers like combine it ref a keratometer and others just call it a refractor Keratometer.

whatever. and this thing here. It's not a button, it's just a thing that, uh, ties it that holds it down during transport and you can see that there's uh, quite the movement range across here and like, you can hold that in place and then just slide it. Uh, like that, and then just that just gives you that fine adjustment.

It's just so much fun to play with. Let's get this off. and oh, look at that. Oh behold.

the Wonka mobile. A thing of beauty is Joy Forever. Look at this. This is obviously how they detect.

Uh, there's like an encoder wheel here. They obviously detect. Um, where it is. like left or right.

That seems a very, uh, complex just to measure left or right. Maybe they are actually measuring the distance there. perhaps? Um, yeah. that's really.

that's really something, isn't it? And look at these linear bearings here for in and out. Well, this is your X Y axis here. and this is your z-axis In and out. I Guess you could call it with reference to the operator.

Um, so yeah, that's that's. just beautiful. Anyway, check out all the wiring and our Mains power supply over here is a Bobby Dazzler for you power supply aficionados. But obviously we're not here for the power supply, are we? Anyway, does it have a date on that? Huh? Anyway, there.

Uh, they're Rubicon jobbies so that's our printer interface and our processor is just going to lift off. No, that's just the that's just the screen. The processor board is in the back there. Oh I see a lattice jobby? Aha, look at this.

There's a belt down in here connecting to the joystick. The I just undid it. It was actually done up so tight that I didn't know this actually rotated. So oh, there you go.

No, it's it's raising the height. You can just say that there you go that just raises that up and down. Oh so the operator can do that. Not just there.

but they've also got the um, the chin adjustment. uh at the back so you can raise the chin. So this chin thing here is for only people with like different size heads. You know you've got someone with a real massive head.

Um, some engineer walks in and you know, oh better you know. lower it right down to the bottom. looks like I got a spin a ring off that? Well there you have it. Those side windows were the infrared leads.

four on each side there angled so they, uh, point to the point on the that 45 degree uh reflector screen that would then go into the eyes I Thought they might have done that deeper down in the lens system, but nope. Nope. Just on the top there. no worries.

so they're not continuously on. They would pulse those as uh, long and as hard as required. There you have it. I've got the back hood off and check it out.

Here you go. Those side these side panels. here. this just lifts up.

We can take that out. They're obviously, uh, infrared windows that would limit it to a very specific bandwidth I Mean we're talking about seriously? These would be like, specifically, wavelength, color match leads, or whatever. you know. they probably pay a fortune for them.

They're specific. Spectrum But interestingly, they've also got a ring of leads right around here now. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what's actually going on here. I Thought I Just assumed that these Leads Here were infrared, but they're actually not.

They're just regular white leads. I'm sure they have. You know, a nice uh spectrum and stuff. but yeah, they're driving those at high intensity.

and uh, this acrylic block here is actually a diffuser block that seems you know, relatively obvious and the black is doing what you expect the black to do. It's actually blocking the light. um, coming through. and the only thing the only light that comes through is this circular slit.

this big circle which goes all the way around like this in a continuous Circle. So this circle is actually called a Myra M-i-r-e and this is, uh, how a keratometer works. It's designed to project this perfect circle onto your cornea and then you can measure the cornea astigmatism. Um, and you know, and you in this particular case, you can measure the diameter, the effective diameter of the or the curvature and shape of the cornea by then, in this case, using a camera which has to be down in here somewhere to measure.

Uh, that. But yeah, it's designed to. Project A Perfect Circle and then this plastic lens thing on top. um, that must be just designed to focus that and then on top of that as well.

We've got that manual filter thing that we unscrewed so it looks like it has. You know, some sort of, you know, limiting the bandwidth somehow. But yeah, this is cool. I Mean you can get uh, manual.

uh, keratometers which you know, flip things in and out and stuff like that. but this is just more advanced version. But yeah, basically that's what all this plastic is doing. That's what all this lens and Lead assembly is all here doing.

That's the keratometer function. I'm not sure if the infrared leads are used as part of that as well. Um, but yeah, this is basically it generates that Circle and you can see that when you actually use the thing, you can see that Circle generated and that just reflects off your eyeball and it measures it cooler. Then they've got like a quite precisely made a box here with the mirror angled in there so that would be precisely engineered for your 45 degrees.

it'd probably be, you know, a special glass, maybe even specially coated as well. I Do see like a tinted sort of like coating on it, so it's doing something. Warning: invisible lead radiation when opening. Um yeah.

I mean you're supposed to steer into this thing. So yep. well for those who thought this might have been just a camera and that was it? Noob Nope. Look, we got some special special Optics in here.

This looks pretty expensive. Yeah, so we've got a whole bunch of stuff going on in here. We've got a bottom box down here and then there's a motor in there which is driving something that'd be like some sort of maybe auto focus mechanism. although when I was using it I Noticed that just simply mechanically physically moving the entire assembly back and forth was what was doing the focusing.

But we've got multiple light paths here. Okay, so we've got the lens at the top here. and then we've got a 45 degree mirror here which then goes into the biggest box in here which I'm guessing that is the camera. that'd be my guess just by you know, physical size of it and then obviously it goes.

so it gets reflected into there but it also passes through. looks like there's another prism there which then bounces. it reflects it into whatever this module is I Don't know. Is that like an maybe that's a high intensity infrared source and the other leads aren't actually doing the main thing? I Don't know.

Anyway, there's another lens under that as well. which then, um, there's another box down here which has a aperture cut out of it I didn't expect I thought maybe it's just as easy as you know. A couple of filters and a camera and it's all Magics happening in software. but no, no hi, there's a lot happening here.

so there's the middle Optics there up close and I can see some sort of mirror down in there. so I'll take that can off this side here. this. PCB this is just a uh, basically you can see the wires going up there.

It's pretty fancy for a lead driver, but uh, you know it's gotta drive these things precisely and pulse them and do what not Well I totally guessed that. one wrong camera sensor. There it is. PCB camera sensor down on the bottom.

didn't have details on that, but maybe I can read that later back on the 4K edit Um on the thing. but yeah, it's basically got a little lens on the top here. plus I guess a filter. once again, a filter material.

There's just tons of filter material. There's just so many stages of filtering inside this thing. it's just it's crazy. Anyway, um yeah, so it looks like is this a stage? A motorized stage that can move the move the camera? I Guess Well, I would power this thing up up at that uh you know, die awarding message on the back about you know high power um leads in this thing I I guess I don't want to power it up and then look into it? go I mean I'm not going to take it apart any further because this thing is operational so I do want to keep it I think it's still pretty darn good.

It's got a date of uh, last tested in 2015. yeah I can see the lead screw in there for this motor so that just moves the camera up and down. Trust me, there's a little lens uh inside there so maybe that's like an auto focus. hence the auto nature of this thing.

Once you manually get it within range, then this uh motor here takes care of like the auto focus you know and really fine adjust it. and uh yeah, Bob's your uncle. But anyway, I don't know what that does or what that does. So unless I get like a million thumbs up or something.

Um, and you want to see an extreme tear down, but that would actually actually be destruction. Maybe if I get enough thumbs up, this gets enough views. Maybe I will do that and this does the uh keratometer part of as well the curvature of the eyeball. So I presume you wouldn't need all of this for your basic uh Auto refractor.

Anyway, there's a lot of fascinating Optics and uh, physics and Science and Engineering that goes into one of these bad boys. That's why they cost a lot, but of course the other big cost is in. like the certification of these things as I said, like this is old but old model but it is one of you know, one of the most reputable Uh ones on the market. so everyone trusts this.

They use it in research and everything else actually. given the uh, almost identical like ribbon cable coming out of this top one, both ribbon cables coming out. once again, my original assumption that this was a camera is probably correct. but I reckon we've got two cameras I reckon we've got one for the Uh Keratometer and one for the auto refractor down the bottom.

All right, that's the entire processing section of this. and there's a lattice. Orca Wow, Um, I don't recall a lattice Orca Um, so is that a Cpld or an Fpga or what's going on there? Um, that looks like a main processor over there and then they've got some, you know, fairly decent looking uh, flash program memory and uh, working RAM and stuff like that this Analog Devices Joby down here without reading the part number I can tell you exactly what that is that is the Uh video. uh ADC to read in.

So and of course you can get a direct video out of this. So yeah, that probably has direct Uh video out as well. and there's some nice uh Rfib down there. but uh yeah, basically all this cable loom in there just moves with the Uh platform.

and yeah, there's nothing else in there. There's just as I said, there's just that belt drive to adjust the height. but uh yeah, that's the entire processing in this thing. and uh yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of magic in the auto function Alto software functionality of this thing, but really, it's the Optics that do the business.

So there you have it. I Hope you enjoyed the tear down of this interesting bit of Kit Leave your thoughts and comments down below. Don't forget to subscribe all that sort of stuff. Check out the EV blog forum and my merch store.

Catch you next time you pew pew.