I am doing some robotics projects but my main area of interest is trying out several algorithms for the processing of the stream of data coming from the video.
I am wondering what type of camera I should invest in. Either I could buy a web cam and hope I can find a driver I could either modify or use. i.e. every frame is somehow stored on the computer automagically or I could buy a camera not unlike the AVRcam (http://www.jrobot.net/Projects/AVRcam.html) or the CMUcam and try to do the processing once the data has been streamed to the nearest computer ? or should I use an expensive video card, some CCTV camera and a frame grabber to digitize photos so they can be processed afterwards. I expect my processing algorithms to handle at least 15 frames per second framerate once they are working ont the final set-up.
My constraints are that I would like to avoid as much as possible complex set-ups even if that means buying a more expensive camera set-up. For the prototyping, I would like to try my algorithms out using a combination of python and matlab (all very slow) and then expect the same architecture (image files location and flow) with speedier set-up like python+psyco or C. All the processing would be done on a computer dedicated for that. Windows or Linux are possible.
An easy approach to this is to use a wireless camera on your robot, with the receiver attached to a frame grabber on a remote host. This allows you your choice of camera (stand alone video transmitters are widely available), and you are not limited to only processing hardware you can carry on board your robot. You also get full FPS. Frame-grabber cards are inexpensive and widely available for both Windows and Linux.
Hope that helps -- tAfkaks
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