Motion or Vision: Where should I start?

[Seth Bergman]

I would like to watch an altimeter dial using a camera (monochrome is fine). I would like to track the needle point as it swings and count the number of times it passes "0" cw and ccw around the dial. It will make one complete revolution in a minimum of 4 seconds. This altimeter will have have 10 numbers (0 through 9). Above each of numbers is a bold white line indicating 100 feet. In between the bold lines are 4 thiner and smaller white lines indicating 20 feet.

My Question is: What is the best hardware and software I should use to watch the needle point rotate, determine approx. how far it is from the small and bold white lines, and the approximate climb rate?



Spare no detail... Your help is much appreciated!

[algames]

I am assuming you are suing some sort of stepper motor to turn the needle. You could use a 7334 stepper motion controller to do this. You can also use a 1409 image acquisition board to acquire the visual information of the needle into the computer. I would also recommend using Vision Builder AI to perfomr the inspection and counting of the events evey time the needle goes over a certain number. Using the 1409 you can perform continuous acquisition (grab) and analyze the images as they come in to the board. If the acquisition needs to be dristributed, you might consider using the Compact Vision System which can do the analysis in a distributed, real time manner using Vision Builder AI.