PineNut wrote:Stan,
At first I wasn't understanding your comparisons, but after thinking about it, I think I got it (time vs x-axis).
Yeah, it is a different view of the world ... looking "up time" rather than "up track".
I figured that a web cam that does 30 fps will make a new frame about every 2 inches of car travel. Improve to 90 fps, the few frames arrive about every 0.6 inches of car travel. The down-side is that the car images are pretty blurry either way.!PineNut wrote:Its time to get some hardware and start playing around. I do know that Logitech sells a webcam (30 fps) that would be great for mounting on top of the finish line - looking down, and has built in software to record and replay video clip. You could trigger manually - start before you trigger the gate, then stop once they all went through and replay it. The cheapest logitech that comes with the software is the Pro 9000 camera (software called RightLight). Its $70-90 depending on where you can find it.
It would be interesting to decompose a few frames and then reassemble one line from each with time rather than up track being the y-axis! I don't know how long the CCD collects light ... so might still be blurry, or if the lens is fast, they might sharpen up. In any case, the car in the picture will be very, very short ... like 3 to 12 pixel lines long!