Our primary product is the TablePi2 (available here), an automated photogrammetry turntable designed to aid in the digitisation of small to medium-sized objects and Powered by Raspberry Pi. The TablePi2 can pilot one digital camera or three cameras simultaneously and is capable of capturing and downloading over 100 24MP RAW images in less than 5 minutes.
Founded in January 2018, PalaeoPi is a University of Oxford spinout company that originated in the School of Archaeology and is supported by Oxford University Innovation in the city of Oxford, UK. PalaeoPi is a lean spinout company and micro enterprise that fuels its growth primarily through consultancy and sales. You can read more about our history below.
What our Customers are saying
“The turntable was very easy to set up and use, it worked with an old Canon camera I had straight out of the box”
Dr Paul Wilson Warwick University
“A very useful addition to mass digitisation workflows!”
Mr John Peterson University of Liverpool
Company History
It all began in 2016 when our Executive Director Richard Benjamin Allen constructed a prototype Lego and 3D printed motorised photogrammetry turntable for researchers based at the Universities of Oxford and Aberdeen. The turntable went on a tour of museum archives around Europe with post-doctoral researcher Dr Ardern Hulme-Beaman. As one of the first machines of its kind, it gathered positive attention from researchers who often asked if they could “get one” and so the plans, 3D files, and code for it were eventually published here.
However, not all researchers were comfortable building one by themselves and so in 2017 Richard started work on a more professional build as an “out of box” solution. It was this that led to the formation of our company and launch of our first product, the TablePi, which we sold from 2018 to 2021 to customers at leading universities around Europe and the UK.
The TablePi automated photogrammetry turntable, our first ever commercial product
By mid 2019 we had released version 2.0 of our software (improving the performance and reliability of the TablePi significantly) and began work on the next version of the hardware, the TablePi2, which became available for pre-order in the summer of 2022.
Company Ethos
At PalaeoPi we do things differently from our competitors. Due to our small size and origins within the archaeological research community, we reinvest the majority of our profits into research & development. Our primary goal is to open up high quality, research-grade lower cost 3D scanning and digitisation techniques to a broader user base. Our secondary goal is providing our customers with long term support including the right to repair and backwards compatibility of hardware and software.
Our products are primarily geared toward the heritage and university sectors, but they are also applicable to fields such as game development, forensic reconstruction, and engineering.
