Jaiaaryan
WHAT WE BUILT • OCTB (Optical Compatibility Test Bench) — try a camera/lens/light swap in software before buying hardware, and prove the instrument still gives the same answer.
Core trick
Simulates a candidate camera, lens, and light swap by rendering the image and running the frozen legacy grader to check the decision stays unchanged.
Description
WHAT WE BUILT
• OCTB (Optical Compatibility Test Bench) — try a camera/lens/light swap in
software before buying hardware, and prove the instrument still gives the
same answer.
• It simulates how the new hardware forms the image, runs the ORIGINAL legacy
analysis algorithm unchanged, and checks the decision is preserved (same
grade, successful decode, metric in tolerance).
• Every value is provenance-tagged; the legacy grader is byte-frozen and
hash-verified so its verdict can't drift.
WHAT WE FOUND
• A hardware swap can SILENTLY change the answer — the failure is invisible
until after you've bought the part and re-run real assays.
• Example the app makes obvious: a Red-630nm light turns every color patch red
and wrecks the grader — caught before a cent is spent.
WHY IT MATTERS
• Legacy machines from the 1990s–2000s still work and produce value, but their
specific camera/lens/lamp goes end-of-life.
• You can't just drop in a replacement (software was tuned to the old optics),
and ripping out the system means costly re-engineering + revalidation.
• Today qualifying a part means buy → install → run assays → compare → repeat:
weeks per candidate on a validated instrument.
• OCTB does the first pass in software: screens the whole market, ranks the few
parts worth physically testing, and builds the evidence report — without
touching the trusted legacy system.
README excerpt
# OCTB — Optical Compatibility Test Bench **Try a camera, lens, and light swap in software before you buy the hardware — and prove the instrument still gives the same answer.** --- ## Why this exists Many diagnostic, life-science, and industrial-inspection instruments were designed in the 1990s–2000s around a *specific* camera, lens, and light source. Those optical parts go end-of-life. The problem is that you can't just drop in a replacement: the instrument's downstream image-analysis and grading software was implicitly tuned to the original optics. A different sensor, a new lens, or a halogen→LED light swap can **silently shift the result** — a blood-typing grade flips, a barcode stops decoding, a measurement drifts — and quietly invalidate an instrument that people trust to be correct. Today, confirming a replacement means doing it the hard way: **buy candidate hardware, install it, run real assays, compare the output, and repeat.** On a validated instrument that can mean weeks of re-verification per candidate — so teams only ever try a handful of combinations, often discovering the failure late and expensively. **OCTB does the first pass in software.** For each candidate camera + fixed-focal-length lens + illumination combination, it: 1. **Simulates** how that hardware would actually form the image (spectra, sensor response, lens geometry, illumination, noise, ISP), 2. **Runs the *unchanged* legacy analysis algorithm** on the simulated image, and 3. **Checks whethe