tiny Cameras

• MH-SC01 expensive but small
• http://www.concealedcameras.com/? maybe you can find something here. Sadly it looks suspiciously like they ship to US/Canada only.

"Video" in this sense means "visual information" only, not "movies". That's because watching video with a quickcam is kind of like looking at the world through a slightly grainy black and white photocopier while repeatedly pressing the "Copy" button. (Clever analogy loosely borrowed from Neal Stephenson)

"Video" in this sense means "visual information" only, not "real-time movies". That's because watching live video with a quickcam is kind of like looking at the world by way of a somewhat grainy photocopier while repeatedly pressing the "Copy" button. (Clever analogy loosely borrowed from Neal Stephenson)

%META:TOPICINFO{author="DonPapp" date="1020095340" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="WebHome"}%

Video Capture in Linux

Almost all Video Capture for Linux works via Video4Linux: http://bytesex.org/v4l/

Video capture is an important consideration in Wearable Computing. Unfortunately most PC/104 and PC/104+ video capture cards can cost over a thousand dollars! But luckily there are options.

Connectix QuickCam?

The venerable black & white QuickCam? is a digital camera in a little grey ball that plugs into the parallel port and takes power (+5V) from the keyboard port. There are also other incarnations (USB, color, etc)

It is certainly the cheapest and easiest way to get video capture on Linux, especially since there is built-in kernel support for the Quickcam to make it available as a video device.

"Video" in this sense means "visual information" only, not "movies". That's because watching video with a quickcam is kind of like looking at the world through a slightly grainy black and white photocopier while repeatedly pressing the "Copy" button. (Clever analogy loosely borrowed from Neal Stephenson)

USB Video Capture

http://aeinnovations.com/downloads/USBvision/

The software and hardware guide above is for a Linux kernel module to allow you to use USB Video capture devices based on the USBVision chip to work as a video4linux device. You can then use xawtv, streamer, or any other video4linux software to view and/or capture video from the device.

This is a mirror of software no longer available and probably no longer under any development. :(

Embedded Video Capture on a Budget

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5855301502.html

Online copy of an article appearing in Embedded Linux Journal (http://embedded.linuxjournal.com) describing using an ISA video capture card witb a PC/104 bus.

CliffLeong?'s Ripley v2.0 wearable system http://www.zerospin.com/ripley/doc/ripley-2.0.html uses just such a setup.

PC/104 and PC/104+ Frame Grabbers

Arvoo: http://www.arvoo.com/ Picasso line of PC/104 mono and color frame grabbers, claimed to have Linux support.

Sensoray: http://www.sensoray.com/ Their model 311 frame grabber is stated to have Linux support.

Ajeco: http://www.ajeco.com/ Commercial PC/104 frame grabbers. Web site is light but has contact information. The ANDI-FG works with Linux.

-- DonPapp - 29 Apr 2002