The e-CAM32 and e-CAM50 cameras

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had only had limited success with the Caspa VL and Logitech UVC cameras. While both cameras work with the Gumstix, the Caspa seems to take poor images while the Logitech USB camera performance is limited by low USB bandwidth. Therefore, I have decided to try my luck with cameras from e-Con Systems.

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Simple time-lapse video with gtreamer and ffmpeg

I have experienced an unexpected spin-off while fooling around with GStreamer and my Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro 9000 webcam: A simple and easy way to autonomously capture and render time-lapse videos.

One of the advantages of webcams compared to other digital still and video cameras is that it can be controlled from a computer and the captured frames are transfered from the camera to the computer in real-time using the USB interface. This is pretty much the definition of a webcam and this feature is indeed very convenient for capturing time-lapse videos. Unfortunately, the image quality of webcams has not been anywhere near good enough to make nice looking time-lapse videos but this has changed over the last few years and is continuously improving. The results presented in this article are captured using my Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro 9000 – one of the greatest UVC cameras out there.

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A Weekend with GStreamer

Gstreamer LogoThis weekend was dedicated to learning and experimenting with Gstreamer – an open source library and framework for constructing audio and video processing pipelines. Despite the weekend being spoiled by lots of bad luck (power outages, Internet down, etc.) I managed to beat the hell out of Murphy and get some work done!

My hidden agenda is of course finding a good audio/video library to accompany a software defined radio created using GNU Radio and the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), and to eventually be able to transmit real time high definition video over the air. While GNU Radio and the USRP can take care of everything related to software radio and RF, I am still looking for a good framework for flexible audio/video processing.

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A Weekend with GStreamer

Gstreamer LogoThis weekend was dedicated to learning and experimenting with Gstreamer – an open source library and framework for constructing audio and video processing pipelines. Despite the weekend being spoiled by lots of bad luck (power outages, Internet down, etc.) I managed to beat the hell out of Murphy and get some work done!

My hidden agenda is of course finding a good audio/video library to accompany a software defined radio created using GNU Radio and the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), and to eventually be able to transmit real time high definition video over the air. While GNU Radio and the USRP can take care of everything related to software radio and RF, I am still looking for a good framework for flexible audio/video processing.

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