I've been tinkering with Linux, C and video capturing/processing on a Core2
Duo. Really fun stuff. Here is a short movie of what I whipped up last
week. What do you all think? The speed is in MPH. Two indicators since
one vertical bar often tracks a little better than the other, depending on
the direction of the vehicle. The horizontal bars aren't critical so they
tend to bounce around a bit. Do you like the NASCAR style tracking lines?
;-)

On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:08:20 -0500, "Anthony Fremont"
wrote:


Pretty ****in' cool. Must be a high frame rate too. I am impressed the
camera processes that fast, or is that a process on the PC?

What camera is it?

Do it at night with the camera sensitivity cranked, and see if you can
see IR. Put a Germanium filter in front of the camera for that.

AnimalMagic wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:08:20 -0500, "Anthony Fremont"
wrote:


Pretty ****in' cool. Must be a high frame rate too. I am impressed
the camera processes that fast, or is that a process on the PC?

Software on the PC does all the work. I can easily do 30fps continuously
doing all the processing on the fly. Takes about 8% utilization (of one
core) on a 3.16GHz Core2 Duo. I can do all the motion processing in a few
mS. Takes about 15mS for libjpeg to compress it and write it to disk. This
leaves about 15mS of unused processing time left before another frame
arrives.

What camera is it?

Just a cheap analog q-see pinhole type camera looking thru an upstairs
window. It's connected to a BT878 based video capture card.

Do it at night with the camera sensitivity cranked, and see if you
can see IR. Put a Germanium filter in front of the camera for that.

I have another night camera that is good at seing IR. Most other cameras
have an IR opaque filter or coating over the lens. It tracks good at night,
it's just that it will flip from headlight tracking to tail lamp tracking,
sometimes back and forth a few times.

On Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:22:30 -0500, "Anthony Fremont"
wrote:

AnimalMagic wrote:
On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:08:20 -0500, "Anthony Fremont"
wrote:


Pretty ****in' cool. Must be a high frame rate too. I am impressed
the camera processes that fast, or is that a process on the PC?

Software on the PC does all the work. I can easily do 30fps continuously
doing all the processing on the fly. Takes about 8% utilization (of one
core) on a 3.16GHz Core2 Duo. I can do all the motion processing in a few
mS. Takes about 15mS for libjpeg to compress it and write it to disk. This
leaves about 15mS of unused processing time left before another frame
arrives.

What camera is it?

Just a cheap analog q-see pinhole type camera looking thru an upstairs
window. It's connected to a BT878 based video capture card.

Do it at night with the camera sensitivity cranked, and see if you
can see IR. Put a Germanium filter in front of the camera for that.

I have another night camera that is good at seing IR. Most other cameras
have an IR opaque filter or coating over the lens. It tracks good at night,
it's just that it will flip from headlight tracking to tail lamp tracking,
sometimes back and forth a few times.



Wow, that's from a pinhole camera. Cool. Nice use of available time.

I used to compose my own shots with an old Polaroid camera front end,
and a dark closet to squeeze the exposure in. :-)