Choosing a Camera for Your Product

Intended Audience

The Article is intended for product managers who are interested in integrating camera in to their products and are in need of a complete solution starting with lens assembly, choosing the right sensor for their application and finally provide the Linux/Windows CE/Windows Mobile drivers with appropriate applications.

Choosing the camera and the software

One of the most frequent questions we receive is how do I choose the right camera. By camera we mean the right CMOS sensor with the right lens assembly. Here are the questions the product manager should ask before choosing the camera

* Do I require a fixed focus or an auto focus camera?

* Does my application need capture at very close distances like 10cm or do I need to capture pictures beyond 20m? How far is my target object from the camera?

* What is the resolution I need to support my application?

* Do I need an OS to use the camera? If yes, what OS should I use?

* Is my environment noisy?

* What type of sensor do I need?

* What is the ambient lighting condition for my application? What is the performance level expected in low-light condition?

* If my application requires video capture, what is the capture rate required at the desired capture resolution?

* If my application requires preview, what is the preview resolution required and preview fps (frames per second) required? How much processing is required after capture of each frame?

* How can I interface e-CAM with my target board? What are the requirements on power supply, clock and interfacing?

Let's take an example here. If the need of the customer is to capture data from a visiting card then the camera needs to have a fixed focal length and that needs to be less than 10cm. By fixed focal length, the distance between the camera and the object of focus is fixed with 30-40% variance in distance. Also a VGA resolution is good enough for this type of application since the capture area is very small. The application here such as scanning the visiting card and getting the data out of it would involve programming in a high level language and would use many commonly available libraries that run on top of an OS like Windows/Linux. Hence a need of an OS becomes necessary. If the environment is noisy then it is important to choose a sensor that has a high S/N ratio. Finally applications like this need a black and white sensor

Another example would be if the customer wants to capture pictures at variable distances from the camera. This would mean the customer needs an auto focus camera and if the customer needs to capture Video and save it or would want to give an application interface for the end user to develop applications using the camera, it would become mandatory to go for a standard interface like Microsoft Direct show or Video for Linux.

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This Article would serve as a reference to customers interested in using e-con’s e-CAM solution or use its Windows CE/Linux/Windows Mobile* sol