Controlling A Digital Camera

KatyBri

I'm working on a project which will use a BS2 to control the mechanical stuff in a vision project. The BS2 will move a camera into position, the camera will take a picture, a laptop will injest the .jpg and PC software will analyze the .jpg pixels.

I need help in finding a reasonably priced 3M or greater digital camera which can be directly controlled by a PC (or STAMP). I need only blacl and white capability and I need only to be able to command the camera to take a picture from the PC and then have the resultant .jpg automatically load into the PC for analysis. I've already developed the PC pixel analysis software.

Any suggestions? Thanks

Megaman935

To download images from the camera via the serial port, you must turn the camera on and put it into "connect" mode. In this mode, all on-camera controls other than the power and mode-select switches are disabled, and the camera is placed under the full control of the host PC.
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/DC210/DC210Acgi.HTM
Is this what you mean?

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-Mega
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KatyBri

Megaman935,

I looked at the Kodak DC210's on-line manual and did not see any mention of being able to control the camera, other than from the OC software that comes with it.

I need a camera that "exposes itself" through a DLL or other software feature such that aplications like Excel (using custom VBA code or add-ins) can be used to trigger the camera and tell it when to download the picture.

Any further suggestions?

Megaman935

So you need something like a webcam that can take pictures?


EDIT: You don't need to add the telescope but Here's a thread I found on the subject- it even recommends one!-
http://www.astronomy.com/ASY/CS/forums/345011/ShowPost.aspx

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-Mega
Want to know how to build your own robot?
www.societyofrobots.com
Need good forums for things other than programming?
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php

Post Edited (Megaman935) : 7/24/2007 1:02:01 PM GMT

KatyBri

Mega-

Thanks for the web cam suggestion. Thats a great idea. They are much less expensive than digital cameras. Now all I have to do is figure out how to control the data stream from them. I should be able to find on-line documentation to help with that.

Thanks again for you ideas.

Robotics India

Sorry for the late reply, search for "frame grabber" .. you will find what you are looking for

John R.

I'm not sure that you'll find a web cam that has 3M resolution.

I've done some limited work with Canon digital cameras. Canon (and I assume other camera manufacturers) has a "development API" that you can get. This API has the tools you are after to both trigger the camera to take the picture, as well as download the picture to the PC, or in the case of some of the cameras (dependent on the capabilities of the camera) view a "stream" from the camera as a "preview".

Basically, if the camera comes with software that lets you control the camera from the PC, there should be an API available that let's you write your own software to do the same. In the case of Canon, you end up needing to dig a bit on their web site, and register to get the API, but it is available. For some cameras, even if they don't have an API, there are likely a set of "COM" objects (or .NET) that are installed on the PC, and with some experimentation and "enumeration" of properties and methods, you should be able to get things working.

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John R.
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