What camera to try?

1

I have a computer (an old Phenom II desktop) sending pick and place co-ordinates to a robot. I am working on generating the co-ordinates with OpenCV / Python. Have USB2.

What camera can I use? I would like to be able to control the timing of the image from the computer. 1080p would probably be fine.

Can I just buy cheap webcam (like a Logitech Brio 101) or something low cost and common and use it in such a way?

Thanks,
JP.

2

something like that should be OK.

however, don’t expect too much processing power out of a “Phenom II” these days.

3

The Phenom is definitely not up to speed with a threadripper, but she has been getting the job done for me for 15(+?) years.

The biggest disappointment lately has been loading Debian 12. It crashes a lot more than older versions.

I have a couple of RPi’s with old Raspian that are over 3 years uptime (one would be 6 years but an UPS failed), much more stable than new stuff (on an isolated LAN with only very occasional WWW exposure).

Anyway, how do I tell a camera, from Opencv, or from Python to take an image now?

I apologize for these rudimentary Q’s but I’m an old fashioned just do what it takes to make it work controls guy.

Thanks again,
JP.

4

depends.

if that is allowed to take a few seconds, open the VideoCapture, read a frame, close it again.

if that is not allowed to take a few seconds, then you’ll have to work with threads.

tutorial from the official docs: OpenCV: Getting Started with Videos

older recipe of mine for thread stuff: freshest_camera_frame.py · GitHub

I’d recommend using Python for all of this. C++ is just pain. Python will not take performance from you. All the library calls go to compiled code.