Cheap alternative for the Axis Camera

[Greg McKaskle]

USB cameras typically stream back RGB, or perhaps YUV based pixel info uncompressed. It is not so great transmitting that over a network. Luckily, the IP cameras are designed for this by compressing as they acquire, and transmitting JPGs, an MJPG stream, MP4 stream, etc. This cuts the network load by a factor of ten, raises the price of the camera slightly, and adds some latency to the image stream.

About five IP cameras were reviewed for use on the robot, and the Axis had a good price, good sensor, decent lens, and the lowest latency. You can certainly use other IP cameras, but the WPI camera code for configuring and retrieving the images are built using the Axis Vapix web services, so you'll need to do that part again. There are of course other options such as putting a laptop on the robot to compress the USB camera's stream and transmit it, and if you have a free laptop, that may be cheaper than an Axis camera. You can also by an RF security cam and get the signal into desktop computers via the conversion card. There are lots of ways to do this for offseason, and a number of ways that would have been field legal under last year's rules. The Axis camera is still the easiest, IMO.

Greg McKaskle

Greg McKaskle