Subject:
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Re: If only I could afford a ... webcam? / Re: Fishing for a tasty linkage/gearing/robotic building thread...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 14 May 1999 15:01:04 GMT
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Original-From:
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Alex Wetmore <alex@phred.%spamless%org>
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Viewed:
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1181 times
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From: Wes Matchett <wes@augustschell.com>
> "Aa-Tchoo!" wrote:
>
> > Wes:
> >
> > If you did have a digital camera, would you mount it on a 'bot to create • a dirigible webcam?
>
> The real challenge would be transmitting the images back to the computer. • Using cables puts the cambot
> on a leash. I wonder if anyone has a camera that uses IR to transfer the
images to a PC?
Unless you have an infinite source of power you are going to need to be
tethered anyway. If you just wanted to put something up temporarily the
easiest way to go wireless would probably be to use a low-power TV
transmitter (probably illegal, I think http://www.ldbrewer.com sells some)
hooked up to a video camera. You could then use a TV tuner/video capture
board on the PC to take snapshots every 30 seconds or so. This would last
as long as your RCX/camcorder batteries held out.
It is pretty easy to find software that allows you to control most digital
cameras from the PC. I've experimented with making a webcam using my
digital still camera (an Olympus D300L) using the photopc software (I
believe http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/camera/ has a link to that).
Basically I had a script which looked like:
@echo off
:loop
photopc eraseall
photopc snapshot
photopc image 1 picture.jpg
copy picture.jpg /inetpub/wwwroot/webcam (or whatever you have that is web
accessible)
sleep 20
goto loop
This should work with any Epson, Olympus or many related brands of digital
camera. The 640x480 models can often be found for decent prices and produce
good results for this sort of thing.
Note that the Flash memory used by most digital cameras has a limited number
of writes before it dies. I don't remember the limit, but do remember
figuring out that a program like this would wear it out in about 60-70 days.
Luckily on modern units you can always buy another flash memory card. My
camera is older and doesn't use flash memory (it has a seperate battery for
the memory instead) so I should be able to do this forever.
alex
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics
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