Suggestion for robot vision camera

"Padu"

My mistake. I meant a faster shutter speed, not a higher fps.

Additionally, do you know the Kowa brand? Anything to say about it?

Cheers

Padu

Here's something you can look at: http://www.joker-robotics.com/eyebot/
Perhaps it will help.

In case anyone wonders, this is an ad for the EyeBot controller, which
is about $1000 in the U.S.

But for less than half that, I'd rather have an XBC, which you can get
from
<https://botballstore.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_idR&osCsid=
a60516af7e64c31b89021dab1b860fda>.  This is a pretty high-powered
controller featuring an FPGA, which can be configured for high-speed
vision tasks, uses a GBA for the actual brains and display, etc.  Here
are some links that talk more about it:

<http://www.kipr.org/papers/xbc-iros05.pdf>
<http://www.botball.org/ic/download/manuals/XBC-v2-getting-started.pdf>

I'm not affiliated with these guys, and I don't even have one, but it
sure looks like a great controller to me.

Best,
- Joe

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|    Joseph J. Strout         Check out the Mac Web Directory:     |
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You might actually consider a small camcorder with image stabilization
and a video output. Cost is maybe $450, and you can get realtime USB
2.0-based MPEG or AVI framegrabbers for under $100.

Some of these have IR remotes. Maybe you could connect the pushbuttons
of the remote to outputs of your control computer, for things like
backlighting control, zoom (these often have zooms over 24X), etc.

The thing is these aren't Web cams, and you get 30 fps out of them,
always (well, camcorders sold in North America, that is). There's no
setting a lower frame rate. So, if you can't handle that frame rate,
you'll need to set up your incoming filter graph to toss out frames. Or,
your program may do that naturally by ignoring incoming frames until the
current frame has passed through your capture filter.

An advantage of using a camcorder is that you can record the scene even
as you are passing the video through the video out. Say you have a two
hour tape; after a run you can analyze the tape to determine better
vision algorithms. Sort of simulation after the fact.

For the X/Y head, consider a couple of good DC servos. Not the R/C kind,
but real servos with tachs or encoders on them. Try Murphy's in El
Cajon; sometimes you get lucky and they have something. Will set you
back $100 or so a piece, and that's surplus. Or, you can opt for size 23
or even size 34 steppers, and outfit them with a pot for feedback.
Unless you get some honking 1/4-scale servos with metal gears they won't
handle the stress.

FWIW, the Cohu's are nice, and they're a local outfit. Also a good
choice.

-- Gordon


Padu wrote: