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Best Webcam on a Budget for Linux?
Garak asks: "Webcams seem to be hit and miss for a combination of image quality, light sensitivity and price. Lately I've been mostly missing looking for a webcam to use on my mobile telerobot that I'm building for my thesis project. I require a webcam that will produce an acceptable picture under normal office lighting without breaking my shoe string budget. So Slashdot, what is the best value in a low cost, Linux compatible webcam?"
I bought a Logitech QuickCam Zoom, which has worked perfectly with the Philips chipset driver available here. Unfortunately, due to political differences between the Kernel developers and the developer of this module (who provided a source provided low-quality driver, and a binary only higher-quality driver), the module is no longer actively maintained. :-( This was already covered here on Slashdot.
I remember an article from a few years (?) back that showed a robot that could play tetris - not an automatic tetris player, but a robot that used a camera to look at the screen, attempt to match the falling shape to memory, and play according to what it thought was falling. I can't find the link on google (too many locations trying to get me to download tetris), but if someone with more time on their hands had a look I bet you could find the camera they were using. It'd have to be fast enough to detect the piece before it reached the bottom, and good enough quality to recognise what shape the piece was and in which orientation it was, and act appropriately.
OTOH, the project seems slightly frivolous, so the cost may have been slightly more than shoestring.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
Home depot has some color cameras with IR nightvision, the IR is a little strong for sitting on top of the monitor might blast your face with light, or maybe the monitor gives off enough light that the camera wont use the IR. The color balance isn't that good but I bet you can tune it in pretty close in the capture card. I picked this one up for $50. Just a real nice camera for low light conditions (most home computers).