[NotInControl]

This doesn't have to be true. They can write a separate program which interfaces with the USB camera and runs in a separate process from the main Robot program. So that, if the USB program ever dies, it does not crash your robot program.

There are other ways to do this as well in your main program, just handle all the Errors Properly, and test your code with the camera plugged in and unplugged to ensure it is robust and reliable.

However, if it were my team, I would stick with the IP camera, or buy a smaller cheaper IP camera. It sounds like you are not doing any processing, and just accessing the stream of the camera from the camera itself on the driverstation.

Because it appears you aren't doing any processing if you use a webcam via the USB, you will need to write a program on the RoboRio that grabs frames and feeds it to your DS, while this should be a minimal task, it means that you are giving up CPU on ur RoboRio for this task. Which I would never recommend to do, just for a view on the DS. The beauty of using the IP cam is that no additional hardware is required because it is streaming the video for you.

However, if you are ok with giving up some of the CPU, then make a separate program to avoid crashing worries. You can take a look at our OPENCV example we released for the Microsoft USB cam this year. My recommendation is to use our version of OpenCV if you want to access the USB camera via the RoboRio.

While we only tested it with the Microsoft HD3000 camera during beta testing, it should work for other cameras, and will be a step in the right direction if you go the USB camera route.

Hope this helps,
Kevin