Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000

From White Dots

The Logitech QuickCam 9000 Pro might do the job for an indoor "Tracking" imager, although it's not perfect.

They cost about $100 US, which is acceptable. They have good resolution (2 MP), a good-quality Sony sensor and a decent Carl Zeiss lens.

I haven't yet tried out getting video out of one on Linux. Modern devices tend to depend a lot on their software drivers, so I hope the camera isn't crippled on Linux when using the In particular, it needs to be flipped into manual focus mode with the focus set to infinite. Its auto-focus is driven image sharpness, so images of clouds (which are never sharp) tend to confuse it, and it can easily set its focus on a foreground roofline or tree branch.

Also, at night it only produces acceptable images when its RealLight setting is on.

Just occurred to me that some of the problems with this camera may come from how its output is stored - the bundled software saves video as WMV files with enough compression to cause artifacts, so it could be that by teasing a motion JPEG stream out of it, you'd see higher picture quality.

I posted a blog entry about this sucker.