In this paper the design and construction of a low-cost 3D reconstruction and monitoring system using digital fringe projection (DFP) is proposed, which can perform small and large-scale measurements in different environments and can be applied to various applications such as intelligent monitoring, 3D online inspection, obstacle detection for vehicle guidance, etc. The contribution of this paper is threefold: a) development of a comprehensive 3D measuring system that performs sensors handling, coordinate acquisition, reconstruction, and display process simultaneously and quickly; b) proposal of new filters to improve quality and efficiency of the system; and c) development of a real-time virtual 3D measurement system to calibrate and analyze the proposed methodologies. Optical and simulation measurement results are presented to verify the feasibility and performance of the developed systems. The observed RMS difference was found to be less than 0.021 mm in the optical measurement. From measured results, it can be concluded that the proposed systems and adopted methodology are effective in obtaining 3D surface profiles.