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.
I am wondering what type of camera I should invest in. Either I could buy a web cam and hope I can find a driver I could either modify or use. i.e. every frame is somehow stored on the computer automagically or I could buy a camera not unlike the AVRcam
My constraints are that I would like to avoid as much as possible complex set-ups even if that means buying a more expensive camera set-up. For the prototyping, I would like to try my algorithms out using a combination of python and matlab (all very slow) and then expect the same architecture (image files location and flow) with speedier set-up like python+psyco or C. All the processing would be done on a computer dedicated for that. Windows or Linux are possible.
Any help from either comp.robotics.misc or c.l.p would be helpful. Thanks in advance,
Jake.