JPH07177399A - Intercom slave set with camera - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform on exact image-pickup of a visitor by making the visual field angle of an image pickup camera variable in any vertical and horizontal directions without changing the fitting position of an intercom slave set. CONSTITUTION:A camera unit 7 with an image pickup camera 6 is formed to be a spherical surface, and the spherical camera unit 7 is supported move- adjustably in vertical and horizontal directions by a supporting adjusting mechanism 40 provided within the intercom slave set 1.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention is equipped with a camera used to image a visitor's appearance at a front door, etc., and visually check it with an intercom base unit with a monitor TV in a room when a call is made with the visitor. Regarding door phone subunits.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Recently, an intercom system with a monitor TV has been developed and used so that the appearance of a call can be confirmed when a call is made to a visitor to a dwelling unit. FIG. 11 shows a schematic configuration of such an intercom system. When a call is made between an intercom slave 37 provided at a front door and an indoor intercom master 38, the intercom slave 37 is shown. The camera unit 7e including the image pickup camera is built in to display the image of the visitor on the monitor television 39 of the indoor intercom master unit 38.

By the way, in this type of system, since it is necessary to accurately image the appearance of the visitor with the camera unit 7e of the intercom subunit 37, the viewing angle of the camera unit 7e as shown in FIGS. Have been developed that can be adjusted. In this conventional device, a camera unit 7e having a camera lens 8e and the like is mounted in a housing 1e, and the camera unit 7e is supported so as to be vertically swingable with an appropriate member such as a pin 40 as a fulcrum.
The elastic force of the tension spring 41 is constantly applied to the upper end side of the camera unit 7e to bring the lower end side of the camera unit 7e into contact with the angle adjusting screw 42. Therefore,
In such a structure, the angle adjusting screw 4
The vertical tilt of the camera unit 7e can be adjusted by adjusting the forward / backward movement of 2, and the vertical viewing angle of the camera unit 7e can be adjusted to change the imaging range without changing the mounting height of the intercom subunit 37. It can be moved up and down arbitrarily (see the arrow in FIG. 12).

[0004]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional apparatus, the field of view of the camera unit can be adjusted only in the vertical direction to change the imaging range, and the field of view of the camera unit can be changed in the horizontal direction. The angle could not be adjusted. Therefore, for example, when the intercom subunit 37 is attached to the side wall surface 44 of the entrance door 43 as shown in FIG. 15, the visitor M calls the call button 37a of the intercom subunit 37.
If the user moves out of the front of the intercom sub-unit 37 and moves to the position B of the front of the door after pressing at the position A, the visitor M is outside the imaging range S of the camera, and the appearance of the visitor M is accurately captured. There was something I couldn't do. As a countermeasure for such a situation,
It suffices to be able to change the position of the intercom subunit 37 in the direction of the arrow C, but it is actually extremely difficult and not realistic to move the intercom subunit 37 once installed on the wall surface 44. In addition, although it is only necessary to install the intercom sub-unit 37 in an appropriate position in advance, it may not be possible to install it due to restrictions such as the wall structure around the entrance. Even if it can be installed, a plant or other objects may be placed in front of the entrance. If the position where the visitor stands is changed due to reasons such as the placement of "etc.", this cannot be dealt with. After all, when the visitor M stands at a position deviated from the front of the intercom child device 37, the imaging of the visitor M becomes impossible, which cannot be dealt with, and there is still room for improvement. Further, in order to set the setting position of the camera unit 7e to the optimum position according to the installation location, the intercom subunit 37 needs to be accurately faced to the position where the visitor M stands in front of the entrance, so that the installation position is It is narrowly limited, and there is a problem that it is inflexible in selecting the installation location of the intercom subunit 37 at the design and construction stage of the dwelling unit.

The present invention proposed in view of the above circumstances expands the image pickup range changing / adjusting function of the intercom subunit with a camera so that even if the installation location of the intercom subunit is changed, the image of the visitor can be accurately captured. Its purpose is to capture in.

[0006]

According to the present invention proposed to achieve the above object, a camera unit having an image pickup camera is formed in a spherical body, and the camera unit having the spherical body is provided in an intercom subunit. With the support adjusting mechanism, it is supported so as to be movable in the vertical and horizontal directions (claim 1).

The present invention as described above can be carried out in various modifications. In claim 2, the support adjusting mechanism is provided in the intercom subunit main body base to support the bottom surface of the spherical camera unit. A spherical receiving body, a holding frame provided corresponding to the opening window of the intercom subunit supporting the side surface of the camera unit of the spherical body, and an elastic force in the pressing frame direction are applied to the spherical receiving body. It is proposed that the elastic biasing means is combined with the elastic biasing means. Further, in claim 3, the movement adjusting means of the spherical receiving member that supports the camera unit of the spherical body is fitted into the groove. It has been proposed that a simple structure to be carried out is provided, and in Claim 4,
We have proposed a door-phone intercom with a camera that has a function of restricting the angle adjustment range when the angle of the spherical camera unit is adjusted.

[0008]

The door phone subunit of the present invention has the following effects. That is, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the camera unit having the image pickup camera is formed in a spherical body, and the camera unit having the spherical body is moved up and down, left and right by a support adjusting mechanism provided in the intercom subunit. Since the camera unit is supported so as to be movable in the horizontal direction, the camera unit can be moved not only in the vertical direction but also in the horizontal direction in the horizontal direction for adjustment.

According to the invention proposed in claim 2,
The support adjustment mechanism receives the bottom surface of the spherical camera unit with the spherical receiver provided on the main body of the doorphone subunit, and holds the side surface of the camera unit in correspondence with the opening window of the doorphone subunit. The head of the spherical camera unit is supported by the frame so as to project from the opening window, and at this time, the spherical receiving member is constantly subjected to elastic force in the pressing frame direction by the elastic biasing means. Therefore, if the head of the spherical body camera unit protruding from the opening window of the intercom sub-unit is pressed by hand against the resilience, the spherical body camera unit can freely move back and forth and left and right. Therefore, when the spherical camera unit is thus moved to an appropriate position and then the hand is released, the camera unit is stopped at that position by the elastic force.

According to the invention proposed in claim 3,
The spherical receiver that supports the spherical camera unit can be made movable with a simple structure, and in the present invention proposed in claim 4, when the movement adjustment of the spherical camera unit is performed, the head portion of the main body case The adjustment range can be restricted to a certain range so that it does not wrap around.

[0011]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 1 is a vertical cross-sectional view showing a configuration of a doorphone subunit according to the present invention. In the same figure, the housing 1 of the intercom sub-unit is constructed by detachably attaching a decorative cover plate 3 to a main body base 2 made of synthetic resin and having an opening in the front through an inner lid 35. The main body base 2 and the decorative cover plate 3 may be detachably coupled by engagement in addition to screws or the like.

As shown in FIGS. 2 to 4, the overall appearance of the casing 1 is a smoke filter 33 for preventing the presence of the image pickup camera 6 from the outside on the front side thereof.
Is provided with an open window 4 and a call button 5, and a wiring connection terminal 32 for connecting to an indoor intercom master unit with a signal line is provided on the back side. The spherical camera unit 7 arranged in the upper part of the housing 1 includes a rear half spherical portion 16 that constitutes a rear portion of the camera unit and a front hemispherical portion 16a that houses the imaging camera 6 that constitutes a front portion of the camera unit 7. It is configured by combining and.

FIG. 5 shows the detailed structure of the camera unit 7. The image pickup camera 6 includes a CCD substrate or a MOS which is sensitive to infrared light and visible light focused by the optical lens 8.
Type solid-state image sensor is mounted in combination with the image capturing section 9 inside, and the light passing through the optical lens 8 is CC in the image capturing section 9.
It is set so as to form an image on the D substrate. A control circuit such as a CCD board is mounted on a printed board 12 arranged behind a speaker 11 housed under the housing 1 in order to make the camera unit 7 thin.

A plurality of infrared light emitting diodes 13 for nighttime illumination are provided on the lower side of the camera unit 7, and the lead terminals 13a of these light emitting diodes 13 are provided on the upper surface of a support base 18 housed inside the camera unit 7. The light emitting portion 13b of the light emitting diode 13 is connected to the attached printed circuit board 14 by soldering or the like, but as shown in FIGS. The pistol revolver-like LED holder 10 having a plurality of through holes 15 is fitted and held in each through hole 15. The infrared light emitted from the light emitting diode 13 is transmitted through the IR filter 36 provided on the inner surface of the front hemisphere 16a of the camera unit 7, the front hemisphere 16a, and the smoke filter 33 attached to the opening window 4 of the housing 1. It is designed to be released to the outside.

The spherical camera unit 7 includes a rear spherical portion 1
A front hemispherical portion 16a made of a transparent member is integrally connected to the front of the optical disc 6, but a portion facing the optical lens 8 is a flat portion 20 to avoid image distortion due to refraction of light. . Further, inside the front surface of the front hemisphere 16 of the camera unit 7, the periphery of the optical lens 8 is covered,
A shield plate 22 having a collar 21 is attached, and the shield plate 22 is made of ABS resin or the like that shields infrared light. On the other hand, the IR filter 3 is provided inside the front hemisphere 16a.
6 is provided, but this also acts to transmit only infrared light and hide the imaging camera 6 from the outside. The spherical body camera unit 7 having such a structure is received by a spherical receiving body 24, which will be described later, provided in the main body base 2, and looks like an eyeball, and the head portion of the inner lid 35 is positioned more than the opening window 35a. The side surface is supported by the edge of the opening 31b of the holding frame 31 formed in the main body base 2 so as to project.

A spherical concave portion 23 is formed on the inner surface of the main body base 2 corresponding to the latter half spherical portion 16 of the camera unit 7, and the spherical concave portion 23 and the latter half spherical portion 1 of the camera unit 7.
A thin spherical receiving member 24 that constitutes a part of the support adjusting mechanism 40 is slidably interposed between the support member 6 and 6. This will be described in detail with reference to FIG. 8. On the inner surface of the spherical receiving body 24, two recessed grooves 25 of a predetermined length are provided in the left and right horizontal direction in order to regulate a horizontal movement adjustment range. A pair of ridges 2 projecting on the bottom surface of the rear half spherical portion 16 of the camera unit 7 are provided along the concave grooves 25, 25.
6, 26 are slidably fitted. On the other hand, in the spherical concave portion 23 of the housing 1, two concave grooves 27, 27 having a predetermined length are formed in the vertical direction in order to regulate the movement adjustment range in the vertical direction.
That is, a pair of ridges 28, 28 formed along the direction orthogonal to the camera unit 7 and projecting from the bottom surface of the spherical receiving body 24 are formed in the concave grooves 27, 27. It is slidably inserted. Therefore, the camera unit 7 can be slid vertically and horizontally by the spherical receiving body 24.

Further, in order to receive the above-mentioned spherical receiving member 24, three holes 29 are formed in the spherical concave portion 23 formed on the inner surface of the housing 1, and a spherical surface is formed inside each of these holes 29. The three springs 30 and the three pressing support pins 34, which constantly urge the upper part 24 and the latter half spherical portion 16 upward, are housed, and the holes 29 respectively accommodate the pressing support pins 34.
Is formed with a positioning hole 29a into which the positioning projection 34a formed in the lower part of the is fitted. The elastic biasing means 50 is, in the embodiment, the pressing support pin 3 to which the spring 30 is attached.
It is composed of four. Then, a curved surface portion 34 b that matches the curved surface of the spherical receiving body 24 is formed on the upper surface of the pressing support pin 34. Since the support adjusting mechanism 40 of the embodiment has such a structure, a pair of convex portions formed on the bottom of the spherical camera unit 7 is formed in the pair of grooves 25, 25 of the spherical receiver 24. When the parts 26, 26 are fitted together, the spherical camera unit 7 is pressed against the pressing frame 31 side by the elastic force of the spring 30, whereby the head portion is projected from the opening window 35a of the inner lid 35. As it is,
In other words, it looks just like an eyeball, and the side surface of the window 3
It is supported and positioned by the side edge of 5a. In order to ensure the positioning in this case, the opening window 35 of the inner lid 35
A rubber material 35b is attached to the edge of a so that a frictional force acts on the side surface of the camera unit 7.

In the doorphone subunit of the present invention as described above, at night, the light emitting diode 13 emits light to illuminate the visitor with infrared light. Infrared light of the front hemisphere 16a
When the light is transmitted to the outside and is irradiated to the outside, in general, a phenomenon occurs in which a part of the infrared light is reflected without passing through the front hemisphere 16a and directly enters the optical lens 8 as shown in FIG. In this case, when the amount of incident reflected light increases, LE
The virtual image by D will be added to the image and monitored. Therefore, in the disclosed embodiment, a portion of the front hemisphere portion 16a facing the optical lens 8 is formed on the flat portion 20 to prevent unnecessary reflected light from entering the optical lens 8 and prevent image distortion. In addition, by providing a shield plate 22 that shields infrared light around the outer periphery of the optical lens 8, a virtual image does not appear in the captured image.

Further, in the disclosed embodiment, since the light emitting portion 13b of the light emitting diode 13 is fitted and held in the through hole 15 formed in the LED holding base 10, the light emitting diode 13 is mounted at the mounting position of the light emitting diode 13. There is no dimensional error and the light emitting diode 1 is moved to a position off the center of the camera unit 7.
It is also possible to eliminate the fear that the light emitting portion 13b of No. 3 is mounted with being tilted improperly. This is because the light emitting diode 13 is attached only by fixing the lead terminal 13a.
As shown by the two-dot chain line, the light emitting diode 13 is improperly inclined to cause a positional deviation, but if the method disclosed in the embodiment in which the light emitting portion 13b is fitted in the through hole 15 so as to be completely buried, the method is disclosed. There is no such fear, and light leakage to the side surface side of the light emitting diode 13 is also eliminated.
Therefore, with such a configuration, it is possible to appropriately prevent the phenomenon in which the infrared light emitted from the light emitting diode 13 is irregularly reflected in the front hemisphere portion 16a, and the captured image can be made clearer. When using such an LED holder 10, the light emitting diode 1 is used when assembling the intercom subunit.
The lead terminal 13a may be soldered after the light emitting portion 13b of No. 3 is fitted in the through hole 15, or conversely.
After the soldering of 3a is completed, the light emitting portion 13b of the light emitting diode 13 may be fitted into the through hole 15 to correct the mounting error, or any order may be used. Various circuits and devices such as a call circuit, a timer circuit, and an illuminance determination circuit are appropriately attached to such an intercom sub-unit, but since these may be existing ones, description thereof will be omitted for convenience.

The present embodiment is constructed as described above, and an example of its operation will be described below. The intercom sub-unit is used by being fixed to an appropriate position near the entrance of the dwelling unit after being wired and connected to the intercom sub-unit in the room. With the intercom sub-unit of the present invention, the area setting of the imaging range of the imaging camera 6 is as follows. The procedure is as follows. That is, first, the decorative cover plate 3 is removed from the main body base 2, the front hemisphere portion 16a of the spherical camera unit 7 is pressed by hand, and a force resisting the elastic force of the spring 30 is applied to the presser frame 31. If a gap is generated, the camera unit 7 can rotate freely in any of the vertical direction and the horizontal direction. Therefore, after setting the spherical camera unit 7 in an appropriate position, the camera unit 7 can be moved by hand. When separated, the side surface of the camera unit 7 is pressed by the pressing frame 31 by the elastic force of the spring 30 to position and fix it. Therefore, in the present invention, since the direction of the camera unit 7 can be easily changed and the positioning can be set in such a manner, as shown in FIG. 9, from the front side of the intercom subunit while the mounting position of the intercom subunit is fixed. Only by the work described above, the image pickup area of the image pickup camera 6 can be moved and changed in the vertical and horizontal directions. The image pickup camera 6 is shown in FIG.
With such a setting, it is possible to properly image a visitor who is present diagonally in front of the intercom.

In the above embodiment, the outer shape of the camera unit 7 is formed into a substantially spherical shape, but the present invention is not limited to this. For example, only the portion required for the spherical sliding guide may be formed into a spherical shape, and the other portions may be formed into an aspherical shape. The camera unit 7 according to the present invention refers to a unit including the image pickup camera 6, and is not necessarily limited to the above-described embodiment. Further, according to the present invention, the camera unit 7 is moved up and down,
The support adjusting mechanism 40 that slides horizontally and horizontally is not limited as in the above embodiment. For example, the convex portion and the groove formed between the spherical camera unit 7 and the spherical receiving member 24 and between the spherical receiving member 24 and the spherical concave portion 23 formed in the main body case 2 are mutually You may replace and form. In addition, the concave grooves 25 and 27 and the ridges 26 and 2 for restricting the movement adjustment range to the spherical receiving body 24 and the spherical concave portion 23.
8 is not provided, and the bottom surface of the camera unit 7 is directly brought into contact with the concave spherical concave portion 17 formed on the housing 1 side so that the camera unit 7 can be slid vertically and horizontally in all directions of 360 degrees. May be. In addition, the present invention is not limited to the specific configuration of the image pickup camera 6, and the specific configuration of each unit can be arbitrarily changed in design.

[0022]

According to the intercom subunit with a camera according to the present invention, in any of the embodiments proposed in claims 1 to 4, the camera unit is formed in a spherical body, and the camera unit having this spherical body is formed. Since it can be rotated not only in the up-down direction but also in the left-right horizontal direction, the imaging range of the imaging camera is not limited to the front position of the doorphone subunit as in the conventional case, but it is possible to use an appropriate range such as diagonally forward of the doorphone subunit. The location can also be set as the imaging range. For this reason, it is possible to appropriately cope with a change in the place where the visitor waits, and to obtain an excellent effect that the visitor's person can be properly confirmed.

Further, since the intercom subunit with camera of the present invention is a system for rotating and adjusting the direction change of the spherical body camera unit housed in the case, it moves or changes the direction of the whole case. There is also an advantage that the work of changing the imaging range can be easily and quickly performed by simply removing the decorative cover without the need.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a vertical cross-sectional structural view of an embodiment of a doorphone subunit with camera of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of the intercom subunit with camera of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a front view of the intercom subunit with camera of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a side view of the intercom subunit with camera of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a plan sectional view showing a mounting structure of a camera unit.

FIG. 6 is an exploded perspective view of the intercom subunit with camera of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a front view of the inner lid of the intercom subunit with camera of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is an exploded perspective view showing an example of a support mechanism of the camera unit.

FIG. 9 is a plan sectional view showing a state in which the direction of the camera unit is changed.

FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating a problem of reflected light when the front surface of the front hemisphere portion of the camera unit is formed into a spherical shape.

FIG. 11 is a schematic configuration diagram of an intercom system with a monitor television.

FIG. 12 is a cross-sectional view of a conventional intercom subunit with a camera.

FIG. 13 is a plan cross-sectional view of a conventional intercom subunit with a camera.

FIG. 14 is a half-cut front sectional view of a conventional intercom subunit with a camera.

FIG. 15 is a plan view showing a usage state of a conventional doorphone subunit with a camera.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Housing 2 ... Main body base 6 ... Imaging camera 7 ... Spherical camera unit 8 ... Optical lens 10 ... Light emitting diode housing 13 ... Light emitting diode 15 ... -Through hole 16 ... Second half spherical portion of spherical camera unit 16a ... Front hemispherical portion of spherical camera unit 17 ... Spherical concave portion of spherical receiver 20 ... Flat portion of camera unit 22・ ・ ・ Infrared shielding plate 23 ・ ・ ・ Spherical recesses 25,27 Grooves 26,28 Convex parts 31 Holding frame 40 Support adjustment mechanism 50 Elastic biasing means formed on the inner surface of the main body base

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A camera unit having an image pickup camera is formed on a spherical body, and the spherical camera unit is supported by a support adjusting mechanism provided in a doorphone subunit so that the camera unit can be vertically and horizontally moved and adjusted. Door phone subunit with a camera with a different configuration. 2. The support adjustment mechanism is provided on the intercom sub-unit main body base, and has a spherical support for movably supporting the bottom surface of the spherical camera unit vertically and horizontally, and an opening of the intercom sub-unit. A holding frame that is provided corresponding to the window and supports the side surface of the camera unit with the head of the camera unit protruding from the opening window of the intercom sub-unit, and the spherical shape by applying elastic force. The intercom subunit with a camera according to claim 1, comprising elastic urging means for urging the receiving body toward the pressing frame. 3. The spherical receiver supports the bottom of the camera unit of the spherical body so as to be slidable in either the vertical direction or the horizontal direction, and the camera unit in the main body base of the intercom subunit. The intercom subunit with a camera according to claim 1, wherein the intercom subunit with a camera is housed so as to be movable in a direction orthogonal to the sliding direction of the. 4. The spherical receiver regulates the movement adjustment range of the spherical camera unit, so that the convex portion is moved into a groove of a predetermined length with respect to the camera unit bottom of the spherical body. It is fitted so that it can fit, and the convex portion is movably fitted to the main body base of the doorphone subunit in a groove of a predetermined length formed in a direction orthogonal to the moving direction of the camera unit. The intercom subunit with camera according to claim 3, wherein the doorphone subunit has a structure.