From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2011-07-19T16:44:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby + USB + CCTV Camera Driver?

Bob Carpenter. wrote in post #1011512:
> I have not found any reasonably priced digital cameras - reasonable
> being in the range of $50/unit for quantities of 100. Please let me know
> if you have seen any.

Bog-standard "webcams" are about half that price, and plug straight into 
a USB port. You can start by using "Zoneminder" to drive them - pretty 
cool software, but written in PHP. From that you can work out how to 
drive them in Ruby if you need.

However, they are quite CPU-intensive to read, and it may not work well 
if you have more than two or three of them on one PC.

There are ethernet-attached webcams which are not much more expensive 
than your target price, and give you a motion-JPEG stream output. I'm 
just racking my brains now to try and remember what the one I found was; 
I've a vague idea that it was by Edimax. The Zoneminder site may give 
you some pointers, or google "low-cost IP camera"

Regards,

Brian.

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