[Tfug] webcam recommendations

[Choprboy]

On Tuesday 01 July 2008 18:55, George Cohn wrote:
> Matthew Patenaude wrote:
> > I am looking for any recommendation for [newer?] webcams that are at
> > least fairly easy to get working in Linux. I use Hardy Heron. I would
> > rather pick one up from a store than try to find a used one on line, if
> > possible.
> >
> > Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Without knowing it's intended purpose, it's hard to make a
> recommendation by model.
>

Agreed... Depends on your use.

I picked up a fairly cheap Logitech QuickCam Communicate Deluxe from Newegg a 
while back that seems to work alright. Low light conditions are poor, as with 
nearly every other camera, but otherwise it isn;t too bad. Of note, it has a 
glass lens, manual focus, and will work at up to 1280x960 real resolution in 
JPEG or YUYV mode. One gotcha though, caught me for a while, on a USB 1.x 
port it automatically backs down and reports itself as only capable of 
640x480 at a much lower framerate... Couldn;t figure out why my captures at 
1024x768 wouldn;t work when I took it with me on vacation while they were 
working fine at home, finally discovered the laptop port I had plugged into 
was 1.x instead of the 2.0 I tested with.

For a network camera... I have had an IPCam NC1000 network camera for a long 
time (though looking at it now it looks like it might have died in the 
lightning storm, hung on an image from a couple days ago). It has worked 
great, though the lack of a battery or RTC in nearly all netcams results in 
timestamp/config issues on rebooting and power lose conditions.

For PTZs and higher quality netcams, the Axis line are superb with great 
low-light images. But you will pay big bucks for that quality.

Adrian