A member of this group has taken me up on helping her with a project. It has to do with putting a digicam on a gimbal and controlling it through a laptop. I've done a bit of Google and eBay searches but have not found anything affordable and available as of yet. So... does anybody have one laying around your development lab that you don't need any more? Or... know of a supplier with tons in stock and willing to sell at hobby prices? Needs to be two axes only... I will be making the third axis.
Aw shucks Tim! Now you've taken all the fun out of it!
But on a more serious note. Thank you! It appears to be a perfect solution for the first part of the project. She'll have to tap into the motion sensors to control the movement from her laptop but that should not be a problem. If the project ever develops into a marketable item she can go directly to the gimbal maker and negotiate OEM pricing and delivery.
It senses motion using image processing, the gimbal is commanded directly from the computer so it ought to be easy enough to control directly. It's supported by the Linux PWC (Philips WebCam) driver and the setpwc utility that comes with it can control the pan/tilt. It uses a Philips chipset, hence the confusing driver name. Not sure what support on other OSes is like, but I expect there is a documented API somewhere.
I'm pretty sure it uses the same sensor and chipset as the Quickcam
4000 Pro, Philips ToUCam Pro and a few others. This may be of interest as these cameras have been heavily hacked by the amateur astronomy community, so the info is out there if you feel the need to push the performance boundaries.
I'll employ pan/tilt cameras on my robot as well. When I was selecting which camera I'd use, I went to fry's and bought one of each model, including the quickcam. I've discarded using its pan/tilt mechanism and chose to do my own using standard R/C servos, here's why:
-Logitech used to offer an API for controlling the pan/tilt, they don't anymore and I couldn't find anyone willing to share one with me... I'd have to hack the electronics and drivers in order to find out how to interface with it by my own... no time to do that.
-I need something robust, and the pan/tilt on this camera is not. If you shake the camera, even if it is turned on, the motor won't hold it in place, it will shake a lot. For mobile platforms a big no no.
-At least using their own control software, the pan and tilt movements are not smooth, instead they are in steps, as if it was being controlled using a stepper motor. I need something that if not completely smooth, at least with very small steps.
I liked the image quality and how it adapts between light and dark environments very fast. But then a a regular quickcam 4000 has the same quality.
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