I’ve had a cheap little Point Grey monochrome USB Firefly MV camera sitting about for some time. I don’t know if they’re still around, but they used to sell on ebay for not very much. Point Grey are one of the enlightened camera vendors who provide an SDK and plenty of examples of how to use their cameras, including on Linux.
What I realised shortly after starting to read through the documentation however was that the Firefly MV and the Chameleon USB cameras actually implement the IIDC protocol (basically the IEEE1394 protocol used for FireWire cameras) over USB. As there’s already a library for Linux implementing that protocol and supporting these cameras over USB, it seemed sensible to use it, particularly as the code would them port directly to OSX.
So, a little coding later and I now have support for these two Point Grey cameras in oacapture:
There are a couple of unexpected bonuses, too.
The Atik GP camera is in fact a Point Grey Chameleon in a different skin. A chameleon twice over, no less. I therefore believe that it should also work with oaCapture. In fact, there are quite a few USB cameras implementing the IIDC protocol from the likes of Basler, IDS, Imaging Source, Leopard, Lumenera, Point Grey and Ximea. These all stand a chance of working though the IEEE1394 library may need tweaking to recognise them.
The second bonus is that FireWire cameras may also work out of the box. I have absolutely nothing to test with in this instance though, so I really can’t be sure. I’m trying to find a cheap FireWire camera for that purpose.