webcams suitable for stereo vision

I want to buy 2 webcams for a stereo vision project. I like the look of the Creative Live Ultra camera because it has a wide field of view (~76 degrees) and a high framerate over USB2 (30fps at 640x420 pixels).

Here is the rub: I do not know if 2 cameras will work simultaneously under Windows. There are reports of problems doing this. Some cameras appear to work and some do not, although it may be that some people have simply solved the problem and some have not. Creative cameras have a terrible reputation according to their reviews on Amazon and most of the problems are driver related, so I already feel wary. Typically their support service does not even deign to answer enquiries of this nature.

There are 2 issues.

- It would appear to be impossible to use 2 webcams simultaneously using the deprecated VFW interface.

- The newer ActiveShow interface does make simultaneous use of 2 cameras possible, but it MAY depend on the cameras drivers as well. Unfortunately the ActiveShow interface is so insanely convoluted that failure to make something work rarely proves it is impossible - there are so many alternatives.

Has anybody successfully used 2 Creative Live Ultra cameras simultaneosly under windows ?

Alternatively can you recommend another suitable camera which definitely works.

regards, Pablo

Reply to
dark-mill
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It's possible to get a pair of UniBrain FireWire cameras working simultaneously under Windows. Haven't tried it with USB devices. I implemented support for FireWire cameras in QNX, and saw that the Linux FireWire camera support was a mess, but that was a few years back.

Check out the OpenCV vision library on SourceForge. It finally reached version 1.0 late last year. There's a stereo vision system in there. I tried it once, but the scheme for aligning the cameras in software never really worked right. If you can align the cameras mechanically, it might work better.

John Nagle

Reply to
John Nagle

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