Folks: here is a small summary:
For Linux based system, xawt seems to be the solution: http://linux.bytesex.org/xawtv/ where one can get access to the stream from any device that has a video output. For win32, it looks like the solution is this: http://videocapture.sourceforge.net/ where one has to use the python programming language. Great help, thank you all, Jake. Matt D wrote: > Newbie wrote: > > 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. > > <snip> > > Same for me! From what I can tell, a cheap webcam will "just work" with > a recent version of windows - i.e. plug it in using USB and then you can > have programmatic access to the data and grab frames very easily. This > setup works fine with my digital camera working as a webcam - real £10 > webcams should be the same. Not sure what Linux compatibility is like > these days - for that I know for a fact that the Hauppauge USB WinTV > thing works (or at least the hardware version I have works) with Linux. > > For linux I found this (now on the wayback archive - original page is > now 404): > http://web.archive.org/web/20020322015936/http://staff.aist.go.jp/naoyuki.ichimura/research/tips/v4ln_e.htm > > Hopefully that is some help. > > Oh by the way, speed on a modern machine shouldn't be an issue - my > badly written prototype in visual basic of all things (dont laugh - > seemed like a good idea at the time!) was tracking a single coloured > object reliably at significantly greater than 30fps (it automatically > altered the window it searched in based on size and amount of movement > of the object - at times it was approaching 100fps) on a modest by > today's standards 1.4ghz pc, using a 320x240 stream. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
