Re. Camera Without PC

[slimplynth]

Evenin'

Just been searching the archives for info on Picaxe+cameras found a thread started by Dr_Acula last year...

http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6860&highlight=webcam

The thread has a link that's now dead but looking through their catalogue they have a cam at the bottom of the page, CMU CAM2. (99 squids = approx. £100 :0)

http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/acatalog/Cameras.html

Does this product address the need for RS232/Picaxe? Seems to, depending on what you want to do with it.

regards

slimplynth

 

[slimplynth]

price is still the issue I guess, not sure sure if its the same camera as linked in the original post from Dr_Acula (as the link was dead).

 

[moxhamj]

Agree, price is still the issue, especially considering the high quality USB cameras available for only a few tens of dollars. The problem is the storage - when you snap a picture you need to either run it down a USB cable at high speed, or store it somewhere and then feed it down a RS232 cable at slower speed. That kind of implies a USB hub and storage.
I'm still wondering about using a digital camera with a SD card, then hacking into the SD card to get the data off. Not sure if this can be done with picaxe - maybe with another microprocessor though. I have a Z80 CPM system on the slow back burner at the moment that might be able to bit bang at the right speed and with the right amount of memory. Probably a year off working though, and meanwhile technology keeps moving ahead.
Robotics would be the other application where this would be useful, as a robot needs to be lighter than a PC/laptop. I wonder if there are palm computers/blackberrys/apple phones etc that have USB connections/cameras that can be hacked?