what if we use usb cheap widely availabe cams instead of industrial 1394

[lightgoal]

hi, 

what is the difference between a usb cam and an industrial ieee 1394 or ethernet cam. and since they're cheaper and more available why shouldn't I use it instead of an industrial cam?

thank yo

[BruceAmmons]

Are you talking about web cams or industrial USB cams?

Web cams:  Web cams are cheaply made, low quality cameras.  The color balancing from pixel to pixel is not great.  The sensors are cheap and noisy.  It is difficult or impossible to use different lenses.  The NI drivers are not fantastic.

Industrial USB cams:  The only real issue is the drivers.  The current version of the NI drivers (free version) is not supported by NI officially and can only control one camera at a time.

Bruce

[ScottSmith]

It depends on your application requirements.

For a single-camera, modest bandwidth application, that isn't too demanding, USB would typically be fine.  (and less expensive, as you observe)

But for multi-camera, or even high-bandwidth single camera applications, USB is not deterministic, and the camera application can end up fighting for resources with keyboards, mice, external disks, etc..  Whereas 1394 is deterministic in allocating the necessary bandwidth between devices and guaranteeing throughput.

Scott

(...yes, by way of full disclosure, my employer Allied Vision Technologies makes 1394 and GigE cameras, www.goAVT.com,  but the blurb above is spin-free, in the spirit of this forum)

[muks]

Hi light goal,

Before asking this answer this

1. What is the resolution required by you.

2. If you want to measure anything what is the given tolerance.

3. What is the shutter speed needed.

4. what is the ambience of the camera environment

[Andy_C. · Accepted solution]

Hello Lightgoal,

Depending on your application, each camera bus has tradeoffs between one another. I would recommend the following article to help choosing the best camera bus for your application.

 Developer Zone Article: Choosing theRight Camera Bus

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/5386