diy frame-by-frame machine vision camera software - help!

Post by **richard p. t.** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:29 am

Hello,
I have loan for a week or so of an Artray 300m Machine vision camera. It has a USB2 output only. It gives excelent image quality, and is a couple of megapixles in size (2or 3 not sure). For the life of me I can't work out what software might work with it in the beautifully simple way that dodcap does for video cameras. Is there anybody who knows about such things out there? I had hoped that I could use Premier 6.0 via its stop motion capture mode, but it doesn't recognise the camera. I'm not sure if it is possible to use a USB camera as an input for Premier.
Anyone help?
I only have a little bit of hair left to pull out!
Richard

Post by **lunni** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:19 am

Try one of the specialised stop-motion-capture programs, they support USB. I'm on mac myself so I don't know much about the PC software, but here's a comprehensive list to start from.

Cheers,
Henri

Post by **richard p. t.** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:53 pm

Hey that is a fantastic help henri! what a great link. I am sure it will solve my problems.
Many thanks,
Richard

Post by **avr** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:57 pm

Hi Richard, very interesting thread.
Where did you purchase the Astray vision machine?

thanks

Post by **richard p. t.** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:49 am

Actually the supplier allows people to trial their cameras for 3 weeks, which is very generous of them. So I havn't had to purchase it yet. They are a Japanese company. I organised my trial through their office in Brisbane (over the net): http://www.artray-ap.com/

I just wonder whether it captures too large an image (too many pixles) for the software.
cheers,
Richard

Post by **DriveIn** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 4:03 am

I had a machine vision setup for awhile. Very frustrating endeavor at first, and most image capture software I found that was compatible with the system was corporate priced for use on manufacturing lines. Not cheap at all. Eventually ended up using some freeware security camera software for image capture, but at lower resolution. Look through the major camera sites, like sony industrial imaging for links to other software vendors. Have you asked the company for software? Most industrial systems have some sort of image capture application. Could probably get them to email it to you if they have their own software package for image capture or recording as part of the camera evaluation.

When I had finished with my system, sold it to a college department in south korea. Last I heard, it was shipped to the arctic for use at a research station.

Post by **Skylab001** » Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:26 pm

argh... the art-ray CMOS camera, I trid one out in november of 04, and at that time couldn't find anything to work well with it. It was a frustrating venture. It was the ARTCAM-200MI 2 megapixel version. I did eventually get it to capture with my WP by using the supplied capture software and a bnc to rca connector to trigger the camera directly from the WP.

I didn't get any good results, the camera needed too much light for a good image, all my bright and vibrant kodachrome was so desaturated that I began to think I was transferring B/W, and the whole system was out of time so I would get streaking frames about every 5 or so. I ended up returning the camera. Fortunately they gave me my money back with the deduction of $100 for shipping, after I begged and pleaded about how miserably thier camera performed(there was no loan program in the US at that time).

Of course this doesn't mean that nearly two years later they may have improved things or have better software available, so you may have better luck. I would try the artray software first though.

Brian