IMAQ board and camera question

[tanson]

I am looking for an fairly simple image acquisition system. Right now all it needs to be able to do is record and playback video when triggered. I have several questions. First, are there any imaq cards for laptops? I would like to use a laptop for the image acquisition. Second, do the cameras used in image acquisition have a specific depth of field? ie can a camera that is capable of viewing very close images also view images several meters away? Third, what board would be recomended for just grabbing and recording images, (no image analysis needs to be done).

[BruceAmmons]

NI does not have any framegrabbers for laptops. They do have drivers for firewire cameras, which work well with a laptop. This solution may be a bit expensive for just recording video, though.

All cameras have a specific depth of field, depending on the lens you attach to them. By using a small aperture on the lens, you can make the depth of field relatively large, but you need more light to take a picture. Lenses with a shorter focal length also have a larger depth of field.

It is hard to recommend a board without more information. How good does the image quality need to be? Do you need a full 30 frames per second recorded? Do you need long term or continuous recording, or just short clips? Chances are you might be able to just use a webcam or dig
ital video recorder and canned software that comes with them.

Bruce