Need help choosing a board camera

[BillC 0]

Hello,

I am trying to prototype a product idea, and I need help choosing an appropriate board camera or camera component. Since this is a prototype, I don't need a packaged product (although I will need to set up control and view the images). I'm brand new at this, and I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the websites out there. But I haven't found what I need, I don't think. Can you point me to some products that might work for me?

 

Here are my specs...

Small--spy camera sized.

Inexpensive.

Digital, wired output of image data.

Color preferred.

50 degree AOV in the vertical (short) dimension.

Fixed focus on infinity.

VGA (around 640 x 480).

Shutter speed under my control, in the 1/500 sec vicinity.

Frame rate under my control, in the 1-10 fps range.

Suitable images under a variety of daytime (outdoor) light levels.

 

I'm assuming that I don't want to use a CCTV camera component, so maybe I'm not in the right place! But this sub-forum looked promising, so I'm giving it a try. If I'm not in the right sub-forum, any advice on which one to try would be welcomed.

Thanks,

Bill

[SEANHAWG 1]

The main problem you face is the adjustable frame rate setting. I have not seen a board camera or very many other cameras that can do that. That is usually done on a DVR.

[Nimrod 0]

Search for this on Ebay “camera SCCB module” and you must select “Include description”

these cameras are suprisingly inexpensive.

[BillC 0]

Thank you for your comments. They make me realize that maybe there is a simpler approach. Since I can deal with the frame rate issue in post processing, I can just get a camera with at least 10 fps. So that leaves just one variable I'd like to control, shutter speed. Since this is just for a proof of concept, and I have no experience with SCCB, I think it would make more sense for me to just find a miniature camera with the approx specs that I want.

 

Will I be able to find anything like that? In my web searches, it appears the vendors do not list such specs on their sites. I guess I'll need to start calling some. Any advice on who to try would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[SEANHAWG 1]

All cameras that you will find will be 30 fps for NTSC or 25 fps for pal.

 

Adjustable shutter speeds can be found, but I havent seen too many board cameras that have good adjustable shutter speed settings though. I am sure there probably are some though. If there are adjustable settings on board cameras, they are usually through a few dip switches to adjust the basic settings such as BLC, AWB, etc. Fully customizing the shutter speed gets a little tougher to find. You may try looking for board cameras that have OSD menu's which again is pretty rare for board cameras to have OSD menu's because its pretty hard to toggle the menu on such a small camera unless there is a keypad button hanging from a cable off of the camera. But check for the ones that have OSD menu's as those usually have the most adjustable settings. From there you can search to see if they have the adjustable shutter speed that you need.

 

If that fails, check for box cameras or some good quality domes as it will probably be alot easier for you to find the specs you need through a more robust camera as such.