Camera: M1011 versus 206 ? Any Camera ?

[de_]

We have an old Axis 206. We need to get a spare. Its still possible to buy the 206.

Anyone know for certain (hopefully with first hand experience) if the M1011 is materially superior (ie a competitive advantage: throughput, quality of image etc) over the 206 ?
If we get a M1011, will all our target setup we used with the 206 be directly usable in the M1011 without a lengthy period of recalibration in front of the hoops ?

Lastly, is it true we can use any IP brand / model of IP camera or are we restricted to the 206 and M1011 ?

[Greg McKaskle]

The 206 is discontinued. I'm sure they are available from teams and perhaps other web locations. The M1011 is actually cheaper than the 206 was, and compares well to the 206.

My observations:
The 206 has a manual focus lens, the M1011 is a fixed focus. For FRC, the M1011 is better.
The 206 seems to be a bit better with low light, possibly due to the aperture size of the fixed lens.
The M1011 supports more compression formats (which are not used by FRC).
The M1011 is slower to return JPEGs, but all of the WPILib was changed to use MJPG by default, and that is the same.
The M1011 reset button is far less likely to get pressed by accident.
Both are good IP cameras for the money. They are pretty successful for security, and I've seen them at the mall in the interactive kiddy games. The games where the kids splash around in the projected water or kick the projected can/balls/objects.

A camera is a sensor, so the rules are pretty open. WPILib source can be adapted to other cameras, but it is very unlikely that it would work without modification.

Greg McKaskle

[de_]

Thanks for great overview. I bet 10/1 our computer guys were not aware of the manual focus. I know we forgot / didn't know about it 3 years ago. There is a 206 for $119 + shipping on Ebay while up in Canada the M1011 is about C$200

We thought we blew out 206 today when the electrical students wired 12v to it. By incredible fluke, a power wire to the camera was found to be broken in its insulation and the camera is currently working. But time to consider a spare.

[Greg McKaskle]

One of the nice things about putting the camera directly on the DLink is that you can use a web page, Vision Assistant, or other program to connect to the camera from a development computer. The dashboard is the other things that almost forces you to look at the image.

Greg McKaskle