[AG-TECH] webcam with zoom?

Andrew Daviel andrew at andrew.triumf.ca
Tue Jul 6 18:46:37 CDT 2004


On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, Ron Crummett wrote:

> It also seems strange to me that there is such a price gap in the camera
> cost - you can buy a simple webcam with a $150 ceiling, and you can buy
> the PTZ cameras with a floor near $900.  Surely there has to be
> something inbetween?

The USB webcams compress the video before sending it across USB. I think
you get better quality from an NTSC camera and a frame grabber. I have a
little 1/4" CCD camera from Digi-Key (can't find it in their latest
catalog though) which is OK, and some no-name things for $50 which seemed
a bargain but are no good in low light (i.e. what's good for projectors in
quiet mode).

A consumer grade camcorder would probably give better quality than a
Webcam, plus have optical zoom and autofocus, for much less than $900.
Controlling them from software is probably a pain, though Sony used to do
a serial interface of some kind and there was some information on the Web,
and no doubt IR could be made to work. There are also some standalone
pan/tilt units available. We used to use a camcorder as a document camera,
which I thought worked really well but some of the users couldn't seem to
figure out the controls...

 --
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376
security at triumf.ca




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