Hi,
I am about to buy one of these FireflyMV's. It's 350$ with shipping to california.
Has anyone actually tried them?
There is a new version with usb2.0, do any of you think it would be easier than 1394 to get these working under linux?
best,
J
On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Martin Schied crinimal@gmx.net wrote:
hey all,
Jaime Oliver schrieb:
mmh, I don't really know about lengths. I think there is a limit to how long your firewire cable should be. I usually work with analog cameras in linux where cables can be long ad I capture with a pci card.
I think a cheap option that I've seen working well with macs is the unibrain fire-i: http://www.unibrain.com/Products/VisionImg/Fire_i_DC.htm
you can buy lenses and chain them, not more than 30fps though,
J
lengths between firewire 400 devices is usually 4.5m, but you can daisy chain them up to 16 times giving you 72 metres. it's not very recommendable to make long chains, as every plug may be a "weak point" in your chain. firewire 800 can have longer cables, but i don't know...
Jack schrieb:
Thanx for the reply. The models are too big for me. I need a smaller camera (something like a cube) because the installation must be discreet. Have you something else to suggest ? Chris : what do you think about Sony driver ? I can't use a PCI card because i will work with a macmini. ++
as manufacturer of small firewire cameras there's also "point grey". I don't know exactly about cost, and didn't try them on my own but they often were recommended by people doing tracking, also being said they were affordable, especially the "firefly mv" which delivers 60fps@640x480 and even higher frame rates at lower resolutions.
that's what they say about macintosh (seems to work): http://www.ptgrey.com/support/kb/index.asp?a=4&q=173
i also made tests with usb webcams (only on linux and windows), some with usable results but most of them are crap. to be usable they should support "real" usb2.0 for high frame rates at full sensor resolution (usually 640x480), without compression and have ccd sensors for better quality and light sensitivity. (finding out usb version and other technical stuff can be real pain from manufacruerer sites, usually you'll have to try them). image quality was always worse than cheap video cameras - but as an advantage they were not interlaced like usual consumer video cameras. cable lengths can be extended by usb hubs or "repeater" cables several times, but that's also the "many-connectors - many errors" thing
@Jack: what exactly will your tracking method be based on? natural features? colors? markers? with some luck a cheap usb webcam could be good enough and also really small. (yeah, i'm a fan of using cheap consumer producs and having trouble with them - be warned)
cheers, Martin
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