Getting itchy project fingers.. OS advice..

[NickK]

Well being the 'geek' I am, I'm getting itchy project fingers again.

This time I'm considering a robotic arm and two webcams for a 'probe' home-brew project for computer vision.

The reason for a robotic arm is to give some degree of movement without having a roving rover.

The main issue is getting the interface for the webcam images (preferrably without compression). Now in Linux this would mean writing my own driver for the particular webcam.. and logitech is proprietary.. so that leaves the choice of windows HAL and logitect or going non-logitech.

Anyone have any comments/advice?

 

[NickK]

I have in mind the following components:

Initially start with the webcams - reason is they're relatively cheap and can have all the outer casing removed for wieght saving..

Lynxmotion Robotic arm and here's some video footage

It has a SSC-32 servo controller so it can control more than just that arm servos. Max lift weight is 85g with the basic servos but it these could be beefed up.

I need to be able to move the webcams through the environment (although a rover is cool it's not as easy due to space constraints).