best set-up/specs for vision system

[b1nary]

hi! my apologies in advance if this is the wrong thread.
for any who have or still work with vision systems, i'd love a general idea of what set-up/specs would work best with a robot. for example, when we define vision system, i think of it as a camera (obviously), like a gopro - the vision of the robot! we would hope to use this to our drive team's advantage, to get a field view, if that makes sense.

while vision system isn't anything we are incorporating into our robot this season, i'd love to get a start with it in my freetime, as we have expressed interest in using that in the future.

i think our vision system would be focused on laptop/camera (such as microsoft lifecam/gopro), and i'd like to know how to best utilize a system. what i'd like to know would be if:

-pi/arduino helps vision system/utilization of the pi/arduino?
-recommended language to code the vision system
-exposure/fps/feedback that will provide the best reliability/efficiency

i read team 341's 2012 vision system report, which had a lot of information i found reliable - any stories/links or examples of other vision systems would help!

sorry for the word jumble, i didn't quite know how to word this.
thank you so much!