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A camera off a $50 budget phone will probably beat every $100 webcam on the market. So why can't I get that same camera module, minus the phone parts but plus a

A camera off a $50 budget phone will probably beat every $100 webcam on the market. So why can't I get that same camera module, minus the phone parts but plus a usb interface, for $100.

izacus 6y ago
Most likely because most of the difference is in the Qualcomm DSP attached to your phones SoC, not the actual camera module. The mobile phone images contain a lot of postprocessing which the webcams don't do.
- postalrat 6y ago
  Include the DSP then. You have twice the budget of the phone to produce the USB camera.
  - est31 6y ago
    But you produce in lower quantities so your development cost makes up a larger slice of the pie, as well as other fixed costs deeper into your supply chain.
ramraj07 6y ago
You can https://www.e-consystems.com/13mp-autofocus-usb-camera.asp https://www.e-consystems.com/13mp-autofocus-usb-camera.asp I bought one of these for using with my lab microscope since the alternatives from thorlabs was 10x more expensive for no reason. It worked fine for a year then it stopped working. Maybe I spillled something on it? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- dekhn 6y ago
  thorlabs cameras, and scientific cameras in general, have very different response functions. useful if you want to make quantitative measurements, accurately represent a B&W scene, etc. I use a BlackFly (FLIR) camera on my scope, but have been looking to do something similar to you, since the camera API is not V4L2, but rather a custom framegrabber SDK.
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    I just wanted something to capture transmitted light images on a real-longterm setup. Turns out the best method is to wheel a simple tissue culture microscope to a warm room and put a cell phone on the eyepiece :) made some cool movies for sure!
    - dekhn 6y ago
      Currently I'm playing with this: https://github.com/bionanoimaging/UC2-GIT https://github.com/bionanoimaging/UC2-GIT which does a lot of that (mainly for educational purposes- I think most scientists should focus on getting grant money to buy professional equipment).
      - ramraj07 6y ago
        That's a candidate for sure, my efforts slightly predate the 3d printed microscope revolution slightly, and I had to MacGyver my way to prove I can image cell cultures long-term without spending 2-300k (since I was doing wild goose chase hypotheses) and hence this solution. Are you playing with it in a garage or in an academic / industrial setting? I'm not yet ready to start but my goal is to try and set up an actually productive garage lab - maybe use some neighbouring univ core facility on occasion but not to set up a lab there. Not a fan of academia in general and hope to not contribute money/ideology towards perpetuating that ponzi scheme!
        dekhn 6y ago
        Garage. The goal is to build a prototype which could then be scaled to a warehouse-sized robotic biological experimental system. But, I have also worked with such things in commercial settings. I'd say that for most real scientists, it makes more sense to raise the funding to buy a professional scope because a lot of the dumbness is engineered out so scientists can just sit down and be productive.
  - justincormack 6y ago
    Yeah I have one of these, the picture is nice with good lighting (I have a black and white one, with an antique 16mm film camera lens). Going to write a OBS plugin for it when I have time.
- hengheng 6y ago
  $250 is deep into mirrorless camera territory though.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    Or GoPro, which you don't need a USB interface for. Works all the way back to hero 4 apparently. https://gopro.com/en/us/news/how-to-use-gopro-for-webcam https://gopro.com/en/us/news/how-to-use-gopro-for-webcam
    - dbrgn 6y ago
      A GoPro performs horribly in bad light though. And it costs serveral hundred dollars as well. If you already own one, then it might be an option. But buying a GoPro to get a better webcam doesn't really make sense.
      - Godel_unicode 6y ago
        Neither of those things is true. You might have to mess with it a little bit in truly dark rooms, but if you can read comfortably you'll be just fine. And far better than any webcam.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    If you by new $250 isn't close to getting you anything decent which also works for streaming as far as I know. Plus for many cameras you need to capture their video output, i.e. USB is not enough (through that currently changes). So you need a capture chip with low latency or else things are bad for "life" usage. This is often another 60-130€ for something decent if brought anew. Plus they don't have a monitor clip so you need buy an additional stand. Sure you can buy used parts but then you also need to compare it with used part prices for webcams which normally (i.e. non Covid19) are also lower. I mean a Sony a5100 with usable objective currently sells new for ~US$700 but you can probably get it new for that price with capture card and stand if you buy clever and we ignore Covid19 for fairness. (And even used you are still far above 250€ for any recent decently usable mirror less camera with objective in my experience.)
redler 6y ago
It would be a hobbyist endeavor -- and look like one -- but a Raspberry Pi plus camera module would hit the mark.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Here: https://youtu.be/8fcbP7lEdzY https://youtu.be/8fcbP7lEdzY
jpsalm 6y ago
You can get an IP camera app and just use gstreamer to pipe it to v4l2loopback. Perfectly usable webcam available on /dev/video1.
HPsquared 6y ago
Phones can already be used as a webcam, e.g droidcam app. No need for special hardware.
- infomax 6y ago
  DroidCam connected via USB on my Android smartphone makes a great 1080p webcam. The latency is minimal. It has great linux support and works great with OBS (and its chroma key filter)
  - ciarancour 6y ago
    Seconded, I wasn't satisfied leaving droidcam streaming over wifi 24x7, password or no password, so I have a shell alias to unlock phone and open droidcam over ADB USB debugging.
- dathinab 6y ago
  It depends on you phone. I tried it with my phone and latencies made it unusable for video-conference usages. Given that this is my main usage reasonable low latenzies are for me much more important then super good image quality. So when I had to buy one recently I ended up with a ~70€ not super good but not bad webcam. I thing normally I might have bought something like a C920 but prices-return ratio was just madness when I bought (sight, Covid19 madness ;=) )
dhosek 6y ago
When John Gruber did his "zoom" video edition of his podcast the Talk Show (back around WWDC), the video wasn't actually zoom. They used zoom for live interaction, but everybody had an iPhone mounted above their laptop screens for the actual recorded video and audio which was composited in post-production.
- jetpackjoe 6y ago
  I still can’t believe that Apple doesn’t make this super easy.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    If they made this a feature they would be admitting that their laptop webcams aren't very good.
- redisman 6y ago
  It's funny that Zoom disappears in the final product. The audio feed is recorded and re-synced on each source machine with a different software and sounds like the same with the video feed.
sukilot 6y ago
What's one such phone? I've never seen a <$300 Moto phone match a $100 Logitech webcam.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- distantsounds 6y ago
  Pixel 2 is quite cheap and will be far superior.
- postalrat 6y ago
  Can't say I did a ton of research to find such a phone but based on my experience in the past it certainly doable. https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Studio-GSM-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp/B07SSCJHT1 https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Studio-GSM-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp... There is one for $70 on amazon that might be a contender. I'm sure if I searched aliexpress or something I could find something better for even cheaper.

A camera off a $50 budget phone will probably beat every $100 webcam on the market. So why can't I get that same camera module, minus the phone parts but plus a usb interface, for $100.

izacus 6y ago

Most likely because most of the difference is in the Qualcomm DSP attached to your phones SoC, not the actual camera module. The mobile phone images contain a lot of postprocessing which the webcams don't do.

postalrat 6y ago
Include the DSP then. You have twice the budget of the phone to produce the USB camera.
- est31 6y ago
  But you produce in lower quantities so your development cost makes up a larger slice of the pie, as well as other fixed costs deeper into your supply chain.

ramraj07 6y ago

You can https://www.e-consystems.com/13mp-autofocus-usb-camera.asp https://www.e-consystems.com/13mp-autofocus-usb-camera.asp I bought one of these for using with my lab microscope since the alternatives from thorlabs was 10x more expensive for no reason. It worked fine for a year then it stopped working. Maybe I spillled something on it? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dekhn 6y ago
thorlabs cameras, and scientific cameras in general, have very different response functions. useful if you want to make quantitative measurements, accurately represent a B&W scene, etc. I use a BlackFly (FLIR) camera on my scope, but have been looking to do something similar to you, since the camera API is not V4L2, but rather a custom framegrabber SDK.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  I just wanted something to capture transmitted light images on a real-longterm setup. Turns out the best method is to wheel a simple tissue culture microscope to a warm room and put a cell phone on the eyepiece :) made some cool movies for sure!
  - dekhn 6y ago
    Currently I'm playing with this: https://github.com/bionanoimaging/UC2-GIT https://github.com/bionanoimaging/UC2-GIT which does a lot of that (mainly for educational purposes- I think most scientists should focus on getting grant money to buy professional equipment).
    - ramraj07 6y ago
      That's a candidate for sure, my efforts slightly predate the 3d printed microscope revolution slightly, and I had to MacGyver my way to prove I can image cell cultures long-term without spending 2-300k (since I was doing wild goose chase hypotheses) and hence this solution. Are you playing with it in a garage or in an academic / industrial setting? I'm not yet ready to start but my goal is to try and set up an actually productive garage lab - maybe use some neighbouring univ core facility on occasion but not to set up a lab there. Not a fan of academia in general and hope to not contribute money/ideology towards perpetuating that ponzi scheme!
      - dekhn 6y ago
        Garage. The goal is to build a prototype which could then be scaled to a warehouse-sized robotic biological experimental system. But, I have also worked with such things in commercial settings. I'd say that for most real scientists, it makes more sense to raise the funding to buy a professional scope because a lot of the dumbness is engineered out so scientists can just sit down and be productive.
- justincormack 6y ago
  Yeah I have one of these, the picture is nice with good lighting (I have a black and white one, with an antique 16mm film camera lens). Going to write a OBS plugin for it when I have time.
hengheng 6y ago
$250 is deep into mirrorless camera territory though.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  Or GoPro, which you don't need a USB interface for. Works all the way back to hero 4 apparently. https://gopro.com/en/us/news/how-to-use-gopro-for-webcam https://gopro.com/en/us/news/how-to-use-gopro-for-webcam
  - dbrgn 6y ago
    A GoPro performs horribly in bad light though. And it costs serveral hundred dollars as well. If you already own one, then it might be an option. But buying a GoPro to get a better webcam doesn't really make sense.
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      Neither of those things is true. You might have to mess with it a little bit in truly dark rooms, but if you can read comfortably you'll be just fine. And far better than any webcam.
- dathinab 6y ago
  If you by new $250 isn't close to getting you anything decent which also works for streaming as far as I know. Plus for many cameras you need to capture their video output, i.e. USB is not enough (through that currently changes). So you need a capture chip with low latency or else things are bad for "life" usage. This is often another 60-130€ for something decent if brought anew. Plus they don't have a monitor clip so you need buy an additional stand. Sure you can buy used parts but then you also need to compare it with used part prices for webcams which normally (i.e. non Covid19) are also lower. I mean a Sony a5100 with usable objective currently sells new for ~US$700 but you can probably get it new for that price with capture card and stand if you buy clever and we ignore Covid19 for fairness. (And even used you are still far above 250€ for any recent decently usable mirror less camera with objective in my experience.)

redler 6y ago

It would be a hobbyist endeavor -- and look like one -- but a Raspberry Pi plus camera module would hit the mark.

JKCalhoun 6y ago
Here: https://youtu.be/8fcbP7lEdzY https://youtu.be/8fcbP7lEdzY

jpsalm 6y ago

You can get an IP camera app and just use gstreamer to pipe it to v4l2loopback. Perfectly usable webcam available on /dev/video1.

HPsquared 6y ago

Phones can already be used as a webcam, e.g droidcam app. No need for special hardware.

infomax 6y ago
DroidCam connected via USB on my Android smartphone makes a great 1080p webcam. The latency is minimal. It has great linux support and works great with OBS (and its chroma key filter)
- ciarancour 6y ago
  Seconded, I wasn't satisfied leaving droidcam streaming over wifi 24x7, password or no password, so I have a shell alias to unlock phone and open droidcam over ADB USB debugging.
dathinab 6y ago
It depends on you phone. I tried it with my phone and latencies made it unusable for video-conference usages. Given that this is my main usage reasonable low latenzies are for me much more important then super good image quality. So when I had to buy one recently I ended up with a ~70€ not super good but not bad webcam. I thing normally I might have bought something like a C920 but prices-return ratio was just madness when I bought (sight, Covid19 madness ;=) )

dhosek 6y ago

When John Gruber did his "zoom" video edition of his podcast the Talk Show (back around WWDC), the video wasn't actually zoom. They used zoom for live interaction, but everybody had an iPhone mounted above their laptop screens for the actual recorded video and audio which was composited in post-production.

jetpackjoe 6y ago
I still can’t believe that Apple doesn’t make this super easy.
- kevincox 6y ago
  If they made this a feature they would be admitting that their laptop webcams aren't very good.
redisman 6y ago
It's funny that Zoom disappears in the final product. The audio feed is recorded and re-synced on each source machine with a different software and sounds like the same with the video feed.

sukilot 6y ago

What's one such phone? I've never seen a <$300 Moto phone match a $100 Logitech webcam.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
distantsounds 6y ago
Pixel 2 is quite cheap and will be far superior.
postalrat 6y ago
Can't say I did a ton of research to find such a phone but based on my experience in the past it certainly doable. https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Studio-GSM-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp/B07SSCJHT1 https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Studio-GSM-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp... There is one for $70 on amazon that might be a contender. I'm sure if I searched aliexpress or something I could find something better for even cheaper.