Does anyone have any suggestions for a framegrabber/video capture card with 4 or more inputs? No full motion video required, just the ability to _grab_ a frame on demand. Purpose is to hook up 4 or so video cameras and have an external source trigger when a frame is grabbed, probably an infrared detector. So, the ability to accept an external trigger would be good too. I suspect that won't really involve the camera or capture card itself though, probably some other method of A->D maybe through parallel, serial, USB or something else to be the trigger.

I like the looks of this card and it appears to have good Linux support:

http://www.ituner.com/spectra.htm

It's a bit expensive though... Decent quality single-frame grabbing would be just fine to me if a low frame-rate saves some money.

Thanks in advance!

one of the other mods here has provided this sort of thing on a commercial basis, i'll try and send him your way....

first stop - motion which is a nifty app with some great documentation.
second stop - grab a bt8x8 card with multiple inputs. i like the one from iTuner. It has four discreet bt878 inputs with two channels each. Been running rock-solid for well over a year 24x7.

Thanks appreciate it...

So the card I had already found is the one you recommend. At $395 it's a bit pricey but I have read quite a few good things about it. The motion detection stuff sounds great as well but I'll probably be initiating a framegrab based on external input, probably a hardware motion detector or electronic keycard swipe. Too much motion in the areas I have in mind and I'm only interested in capturing successful traversals of a few secure doors.

Does anyone have recommendations on any other cards that are cheaper by chance?

Anyone have any suggestions on an easy way to get 4 or so different inputs into a system from the real world? Cheaply... And the ability to trigger framegrabs from the appropriate input based on this input? I'll probably end up having to hack something together for this but something pre-made might make things a bit easier...

Thanks!

well if you're not after a professional solution, just buy 4 cheap tv cards and you can achieve a similar sort of thing, at the cost of pci slots.

yeah, that would save about 200 or so dollars and also give you sound. Get cable TV hooked up and you can record the Muppet Show as well

Avoid USB cameras like the Plague as they don't play nice with each other (bandwdth issues).

You could also skip the cards altogether and get an Axis camera that plugs into your existing ethernet (10/100) medium.

if you're after input capture based upon the input itself... then surely you're back to "motion" again... it saves framegrabs when a movement is detected.

as for external triggers..... i'd say just use a serial port. use a couple of lines there, relating each one to one of the v4l inputs.. or rather just run a shell call when any line goes high...