Webcam vs camera module on pine64+

[fkpkot]

Hi,
i'd like to use my board (pine64+ with 1 gb) for some OpenCV...
I'm planning to capture short videos and analyze them using OpenCV.

I've read the posts on the camera module and from what I get, it seems a bit weak on capturing videos and such.
In comperison i'm looking at a simple webam ( almost the same price).

What do i get from using the camera module (except the compact size and free usb port..)

Thanks ahead.

[irJERAD]

Hi,
i'd like to use my board (pine64+ with 1 gb) for some OpenCV...
I'm planning to capture short videos and analyze them using OpenCV.
... ... ...
What do i get from using the camera module (except the compact size and free usb port..)

I very recently started doing some Computer Vision, DNN and machine learning work on individual Raspberry Pi's and clusters of RPi 3's.

When trying to solve the same question, I learned the on board CSI interface for the camera takes input straight to the GPU. USB cameras go through the CPU.

So even a little lower resolution with direct GPU access - IMO - is better for openCV

[MarkHaysHarris777]

The camera module on the Raspberry PI is really quite good ( 8mp and 5mp ).  The software is good as well, and the video|stills capture is sharp and clear.

The Pine, not so much.

The camera works with Android, but is not the best;  it gets hot, uses a lot of current ( battery life killer ) and from a quality standpoint is about what you would have expected from a cheap phone camera 10 years ago.

The camera on the pine is useless in gnu+linux;  the driver ( even when it works, and that is marginal ) leaves artifacts ( streaks and color distortions ) on stills and vids.  This needs a lot of work.

[dkryder]

Mark, not to mention that the camera itself, the hardware circuit, might just be less than good. i'm thinking if that is the case no amount of driver work will help. ya know, some of the work in figuring this all out should be in pine64 court but i have seen no movement from them. have you heard of anything from pine64 about camera?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Mark, not to mention that the camera itself, the hardware circuit, might just be less than good. i'm thinking if that is the case no amount of driver work will help. ya know, some of the work in figuring this all out should be in pine64 court but i have seen no movement from them. have you heard of anything from pine64 about camera?

No.  I have two cameras from pine and both of them function ( mal-function ) the same way.  They both produce ok images in my playbox, they both get HOT in my playbox ( in fact, I placed a heat-sink on each of them ) and they both look like shit on gnu+linux;  I suspect that if the driver were improved ( if the camera doc were open ) then the pine camera would perform similarly to the pi camera(s).  

Yeah, I'm a little disappointed with the camera module;  but I'm using my pi(s) for the apps I had in mind ( mostly security, pet-sitting, and wild-life at night )