Remotely triggered camera?

[panic mode]

interesting topic, i hope to see more comments and suggestions.
i guess the actual solution will still be chosen depending on needs of particular application.

few things that i considered:
- budget will be different
- industrial vision is obvious choice with all right features like PLC connectivity etc. it's great if you have spare laying around but may not be most economical choice for each application (tipical Cognex camera is $3-5k and it still needs PC as storage)
- webcams have poor resolution (320x240 or 640x480). in most cases this can't compete with regular camera
- webcams still require PC, no matter what. yes it can be remote, and even wireless etc but it still needs PC because webcam doesn't have local storage.
- it may be out there but i have not seen webcam with flash. ones i looked into had IR LEDs as light source for poor lighting conditions but did you ever compare picture taken with such light with one taken with flash?
- any decent digital camera will allow for huge storage and flash
- any decent digital camera will have menu that allows auto-powerdown to be switched off (mine does) and DC input for external power (mine does)
- any decent camera should take at least 50-100 of pictures with flash on one battery charge (mine does). one can have two sets of batteries so one can be charged while other is in use but small PSU is usually more practical and less expensive. in cases where access to AC outlet is not available (out doors etc.) battery operation is still an option (digital of film camera).

 

[OkiePC]

webcam and freeware...

This may be kind of an odd question, but does anyone know of a cheaper digital camera that can be remotely triggered using a discrete output?

The intent is to set it up to monitor intermittent problems that an average technician won't sit around waiting for and the operators won't remember to document. We are shooting for a <= .1% failure rate on some processes, and would love to be able to take pictures of each of the failures and review them at the end of the day.

I've looked around, but all I can find are high end digitals with add on componenets for this purpose. I'm almost to the point of purchasing an outdated digital camera, disassembling it, de-soldering the shutter button, and replacing it with a relay that I can hook up for this purpose.

Our company has security cameras that record I think up to 24 hours of digital video from dozens of cameras. There is at least one in every production area.

The video can be replayed from any PC by a user with rights. Our directors and upper management folks have that right.

They frequently use them to get to the bottom of stories about failures reported by production staff. There has been at least one occasion in which they aimed the camera specifically to trap a problem.

Then the next day, reading from the downtime reports, they can pull up the video recording and jump to that time, and see all of the events before and after.

The resolution is not great, but they are all mounted far from machinery, usually in the corner of a room.

I would look for a web cam type set up such as ours, only a single camera model that can feed images to a dedicated PC and record the whole night shift.

Maybe $500-700 for a PC/perihperals and a $50 webcam is cheaper? Maybe the PC is already available? Notebook with a big (optionally external) hard drive?

And the pieces can be used for many other purposes.

I love mechanical stuff, being the redneck that I am. But, I cannot imagine trying to build a button pressing actuator for a digital camera and trying to trigger it from a PLC. My $135 two year old digital camera has a widely variable response time, and a two position pushbutton that might move a whole millimeter.

And I agree with other comments that trying to message between the PLC and the PC for the purpose of triggering the webcam, is probably an effort that would be wasteful and limited.

Just record the time of the occurence by the simplest surest method (which might be a PLC or HMI alarm report), and view the video file at that time.

The big drawback might be frame rate if you are trying to capture a rapid sequence of events.

Paul

 

[surferb]

Agree with Oakie. I'd like to add:

"Cheap" IP Webcams like the Panasonic, Axis, or D-Link or do require a PC to record. They are around $200. They have a little web server built in with ActiveX controls to view the feed. They typically support PoE (Power Over Ethernet). Many HMIs can view the feed with a plugin or at least externally launch a web browser with the correct URL. If you're clever, you may be able to lauch the recorded video at the correct time by using script and the PLC recorded timestamp. In my experience, recording video is done with a program that you have to install on a Windows PC. Locally stored video might work better if you don't have to keep long term records.