Monday, April 18, 2005

Make your own infrared camera from an old webcam

Video is an intriguing aspsect of the Internet. It's so mysterious with its compression rates, varying qualities, and bandwidth requirements. However, video is an important part of the future Internet. Video on the Internet will become how we communicate replacing phones with smooth, television like pictures. Already video blogs have a huge following with a Google search producing 23,300,000 results.

MS brings us a video on SenseCam. Could it be another potential avenue for blogging? "Watch my day in 3 minutes." SenseCam is a concept camera that takes a picture everytime the light changes slightly which is a technique to detect movement. This camera, worn around the neck, would photo document your day without sound in a time-lapse style video. I think that if the videos did not run too long, it would be fun to review my day or see how someone else spent theirs.

In other camera news, James of Puerilis has turned us onto a step by step guide to turn your desktop webcam into an infrared camera so you can "see in the dark". Bjoern Wieland has more discussion on IR cams.

For people interested in video, this primer is an absolute must read particularly for understanding that critical difference between the lost cost CMOS imager and the more costly CCD imager. When it comes to quality, you get what you pay for.

djuggler's personal blog is Reality Me and consults as Superior Internet Designs


Posted by: djuggler | 8:05 PM |