Stefan Kuthan wrote:
has anyone ever tried running 2 digital/web cams with linux?
Yes, using two ov511 cameras ( http://alpha.dyndns.org/ov511/ ). The
driver has a "cams" parameter which reduces each camera's frame rate.
This allows them to share a single USB bus.
i need a frame-grab rate of about 25 fps / cam, more would be fine ;-)
For that, you will probably have to use two separate USB host controller
cards. Note that most cards only have a single bus, so it will only
provide 12 Mbps regardless of how many ports it has. Some cards (Belkin
Quadrabus?) actually provide four separate busses.
You will also need a camera that supports compression. OV511-based
cameras can do 30 fps @ 320x240 with compression. You may even be able
to get two on a single bus, as long as nothing else is on the bus. I am
testing a single OV511 at 320x240 at 6 Mbps as I type, and getting 30 fps.
CPiA cameras ( http://webcam.sourceforge.net/ ) also have compression,
but I don't own one so I can't comment on the performance.
what sort of system would i need? (it's for a job, not for me)
My CPU (PIII 450 w/ 512K L1 cache) is 60% utilized, running the
aforementioned test. Once I have MMX support implemented, this should
drop quite a bit (assuming it works; I am not much of an assembly
programmer ;-) ).
i am considering using firewire. but don't have any experience on that
anyway. is it possible to process 25 fps * 2 on a common machine, not
using overlay? (i will have to work with the pics)
What sort of processing?
--
Mark McClelland
mmcclell@xxxxxxxxxxx
