Consumer Webcams With High-Quality Sensors? 218
xmas2003 writes "Since 2005, I've had a live webcam watching my grass grow — another is currently watching a bird nest on my front door — five babies! While I appreciate the 802.11g wireless and Pan/Tilt/Zoom (10x optical) of the five-year-old D-Link DCS-6620g, it has issues, especially image quality. I've investigated getting a new webcam, but except for high-end/security-related gear from companies such as Axis, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in the consumer space, as most offerings are just cheaper and USB-connected for tethered video conferencing, etc." So where, the reader wants to know, are the high-quality, reasonably affordable webcams? (Read on below.)
"I have an 18 Megapixel Canon 7D DSLR that shoots gorgeous 1920x1080x30p hi-def video. While I don't expect that in a consumer webcam, their recently released T2i uses the same chip and sells for $800. And heck, point-n-shoots are a couple of hundred bucks, and now many cell phones have cameras built in, so there're plenty of low-power, speedy CPUs in small packages these days to handle the signal processing. So why hasn't someone taken a sensor with good image quality, downsized to around 1024x768, and put it in a PTZ webcam package with 802.11n wireless for around $500?" Even if it's not that exact combination, what are the best options going these days for high-resolution webcams?
Great question (Score:3, Interesting)
Especially with the advances in storage technology, it would seem like higher resolution for security purposes could sometimes be handy, certainly enough to justify paying at least a modest premium over 10-year-old technology.
trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P (Score:3, Interesting)
trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P are decent POE cameras at relatively cheap prices. one is a pan tilt dome the other is not. interfaces well with linux systems and work really well. not especially high rez but pic quality is decent for $250 or so..
Re:Oh come on now. (Score:3, Interesting)
Roll your own (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had some of those expensive Axis/Canon PTZ webcams for work. Pretty sweet what you can zoom into.... we could read license plates off cars in the parking lot outside the office building windows.
I think your best bet would be to attach a $100 USB Logitech Orbit to a $200 nettop, perhaps running off an SD card. There are fairly good Linux drivers (including rudimentary PTZ) and fairly decent optical quality for the Logitech webcams (compared to those D-link webcam things, which I've also learned to loathe). So you could get 1280x960 stills at low frame rates (sounds good for what you're doing) and also 30fps 640x480 video, plus audio. If you stick it on a beefier machine, you could even do mpeg4 encoding and streaming using VLC or something.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think I just found a time machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Try this company (Score:3, Interesting)
I have several infrared high resolution closed circuit security cameras at my home from this company which works well for me www.supercirucits.com. They have some high resolution webcameras that you can see if it works for you http://www.supercircuits.com/search?keywords=ip [supercircuits.com]
Re:Roll your own (Score:1, Interesting)
If you really need the pan/tilt features, an Arduino and a pair of servos could give you those features for under 50 bucks.
Re:Try this company (Score:3, Interesting)
Do they work with Linux?
Stop being obsessed with pan tilt (Score:4, Interesting)
Professionals don't use it nearly as much as they used to these days. They use high resolution and wide angle lenses instead, and do PTZ in software. PTZ was important when your video frame was 480x320 or suchlike. Now you shoot 5 megapixels and pan and zoom digitally.
What do they use for porn? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems the industry has been focused on the cheapest thing that looks good with Skype/MSN/Yahoo type stuff, and very little that's for higher quality or for aiming at anything other than a stationary talking head.
Re:trendnet IP-TV252W and IP-TV512P (Score:4, Interesting)
Make sure you disable the audio. In quite a few jurisdictions (including Florida, and I believe Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, and quite a few others), YOU can conceivably be arrested under old wiretapping laws.
Personally, I'd omit the signs. Why? Information leakage. The burglars will still break in, they'll just be sure they have ski masks or pantyhose over their heads before they're within sight of the cameras. Better to catch 'em off guard. ;-)
Of course, there's my deliciously evil (and unfortunately illegal) fantasy... multiple cameras aimed at the stairway, semi-concealed, with xenon flashes. The burglar steps on the pressure switch under the carpet of tread #5 or #6, sets off the xenon flashes, suddenly sees the cameras next to them, covers his face in panic, blindly runs (or backs) down the steps... and trips over the piano wire attached to two swing arms that normally lies flat against the far end of step #2 or #3, but just rotated 90 degrees up into position and locked when he set off the alarm...
Re:Step 4 -- the software on the PC (Score:2, Interesting)
Set it up as a cron job.
I have had an old 4Mp nikon taking a photo of our fish tank every 10 minutes for several years now.
Oh, you will need a power adapter for your camera, the batteries don't last that long. Ebay.
like so...
rm fish.jpg
gphoto2 --delete-all-files
gphoto2 --set-config flash=2 #No flash - pisses off the fish.
gphoto2 --capture-image
gphoto2 --get-all-files
mv *.JPG fish.jpg
mogrify -size 800x600 fish.jpg
upload to server.
Not live like a webcam, but depends on your needs.
Re:astro or machine vision? (Score:3, Interesting)
For low-end machine vision, there's one obvious product to suggest: CMUcam ( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmucam/ [cmu.edu] )
Another option that's not quite as widely known, but is slightly different (better in some ways, worse in others, depending on what you're looking for) is the AVRcam ( http://www.jrobot.net/Projects/AVRcam.html [jrobot.net] ).
Both are basically NTSC/PAL-type monochrome video cameras with a dedicated processor that does things like object-recognition for you and alerts you when it thinks you'll be interested. Neither is likely to be appropriate for astrophotography, but either one will probably do the job nicely if you want to let your robot find a ping pong ball or navigate a maze.