daylight webcam

Sheets and hoods blend right in with the snow ;-) ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

Usually that is the result of a cheap CMOS sensor with low dynamic range. Try to find one with a CCD sensor.

Get a true security camera from Pixim, servoed iris, and a day/night filter... functions provided by my chip designs... look for the Kiwi (NZ) label ;-)

Even available with steering/tracking using UTC signaling if you want. ...Jim Thompson

Logitech C910. But has a lousy mount. Theres a Microsoft Lifecam with a 1/4-20 screw camera mount. I'm sure it's works just as well.

Cheers

Electric iris required. Poke around Supercircuits.

Same camera behind a piece of Reactolite glass filter?

Back in the olden days, (mid 70's) when cameras used vidicons, the company I worked with had some cameras in a factory for surveillance. At night car headlights would cause big flares and wash out the picture. One of the guys built a simple transistor circuit that took any signal at 1 volt (white) and clamped it to black (I think 0.3 volts) The circuit worked very well, when a car drove by the headlights were just two black circles, and the rest of the picture was unaffected. Don't know how that relates to your problem, but that was so cool I remember it 37 years later. Mikek

Hey that's a good idea. I've got some 'scrap' bit's of plastic ND filter, if you want some I'll stick 'em in an envelope.

George H.

Go super modern with an LCD powered shield!

You've seen 'em around showers and used as window covers in those hotels in Japan, right?

My previous cam was a C310, and it worked better than the cheapie, but we had the cabin re-stained, and the cam really didn't like that. I had the cheapie so threw that in for now. Most of these cams seem to be for indoor Skype sorts of use and don't like bright light.

There are cameras with that feature built in. You need this such a scheme to read the license plate of a car with it's headlight on.

SED readers are getting as cheap as hams. You can't get all the good features in some cheap ass webcam. The naked CCD has a dynamic range of maybe 50dB. You need some mechanical exposure control as well as electronic if you expect good results.

I don't mind paying for a camera that will work well in sunlight. I just can't find one that says it does.

And the cam I just installed didn't cost $1 when I bought it. It was almost nine times that.

"John Larkin" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Why don't you just break down and buy a Panasonic outdoor web cam

Here is a lighted version

And there are other more expensive pan and tilt ones.

Cheers

Autoiris cameras look like this:

There are lenses with the same connector. Mate them and voila, you have a high dynamic range camera. The faster the lens, the better the night performance if that matters. You can always use IR illuminators. If you observe pro installations, you often see the IR illumiator on the same pole as the camera.

Watec is way better than supercircuits, but of course at a higher cost. The half inch sensor B&W models are nearly like night vision.

The feds/military nearly always use Cohu. I've seen some federal installation using Canon PTZ.

I got a Vivotek network camera at a surplus shop for $5. Wifi and wired, but nobody serious does wifi linked security because it can be jammed. Anyway the interesting thing about the camera is it actually takes C-mount lenses. No autoiris. The bad part is the network image can only be viewed with IE due to activex.

Fry's has usb frame grabbers on sale periodically. I've bought both Diamond and Siig. Essential the same product. About $15. This is if you go with an analog camera.

There are half a dozen relatively cheap programs to stream the imagery from usb frame grabbers, or from a usb webcam. They are all java based.

I've used ispy. It streams fine. I'm not impressed with the motion detection. My guy feeling is java has a decent video streaming API, but java itself isn't particularly good as determining motion due poor number crunching horsepower.

I use Yawcam, a free java based thing. Every 5 minutes it pushes the camera image to my FTP site. That's really all I want to do.

Well, one reason is that I'm all wired and coded for USB.