Advise high-speed camera

[msurov]

Hi, all.

We have an electronic setup that consists of connected to PC dSpace board , mechanical system and video camera. Video camera is used to real time measure position of an element of the mechanical system (in our case it is the simple recognition problem, it is necessary to find a colored circle marker in the bitmap frame). This setup is used to research some control algorithms.

Currently we are using an usb webcam. In real time the PC program measures coordinates and writes these values to dSpace board memory.

We found, using webcame was a bad choice for our setup. It is not enough frame rate and resolution. I think the best way is FPS ~ 200..500 and resolution ~ 1280x960. Besides it should be a simple way to join this device with our control system (PC, MatLab, dSpace board...).

Described above parameters are not accurate. I'm not a competent in this technical field, so I need an advice. It would be interesting to listen to any offers.

Our project is sponsored by a Swedish University and we have for about few thousands dollars to buy this device.

 

[sky_123]

That sounds like a very high resolution. Usually, such a high res is not needed. At lower res, check The Imaging Source for GigE cams up to 100fps for a few hundred $.
If you need to know the position at a certain time, there is another trick; that is to leave the CCD integrating, and to have complete darkness, and have a pulse of very strong light (e.g. from a laser) at the precise time that you want to capture at. I'm no expert in this, but at your uni I am sure most physicists will be familiar with this technique, and may even have the hardware (CCD, software, laser, lenses).