Pros: Firewire Interface, CCD Imaging, Great Value
Cons: High lux, Odd base, Hard to position
The Bottom Line: Need Firewire data transfer rate for full motion video & have a well lit room? Buy it. Using it at home, on top of your PC in low lighting? Pass.
Background:
I've begun dabbling with webcams to make a home webcam website. My first webcam was decent - a Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 and I am quite happy with it. I needed a couple more cameras, so I started researching them a bit.
Why the iBot:
Always preferring to be using the latest, when I found there were Firewire webcams available, I had to try one. Orange Micro has always made pretty cool stuff, so I decided to try their iBot Firewire camera. They advertised better video quality and transfer by using an uncompressed video format at Firewire data rates. Made sense.
The user experience:
I ordered and received 2 Firewire iBot cameras, 2 3-port Firewire PCI cards and 3 Firewire Repeaters. Using XP, I was not required to load any drivers from the iBot CD. XP recognized the first iBot camera and it appeared at the bottom when I opened up My Computer, alongside my Logitech Camera.
The first thing I noticed with the iBot, was that the picture was fairly dark. Most of my light was backlight at that point. I turned on a light in front of and above me. The picture was better, but not excellent. I looked at the camera's settings and they were set to factory defaults and on automatic. I took it off automatic and played with the various video settings, trying to improve the picture. I was not able to significantly improve it.
I decided to do a heads up comparison to the Logitech camera. Using the amcap.exe application that came on the iBot CD, I was able to open both cameras at the same time. There was a marked difference between the video quality of the cameras. Again, the iBot picture was just too dark.
I then plugged in the second iBot camera, launched it in a 3rd amcap.exe window. Making sure all 3 cameras were at their factory default setting, I was able really compare them. Under the same exact lighting, all at the same time, all 3 trained on me, I saw 3 very different levels of image quality. Forgetting about the Logitech camera by this point, I focused on the 2 iBots. Why on earth would they look markedly different under the same settings and same lighting conditions?
Factory Follow-up:
I contacted Orange Micro the next day. By the way, while they don't have toll-free tech. support, they do answer their phones and they are quite pleasant.
The focus of my call was on the lux rating of the camera - as in, what is it? The person on the other end did not know, but came back a moment later and told me that it was no greater than 5 lux. Ouch! That's a pretty hefty light requirement. They would not pin the lux rating down any further than the nebulous less than 5 lux.
Conclusions:
I like the Firewire aspect of the iBot. For me, in order to add more cameras and use them simultaneously, I could not use another USB camera that used the standard Windows USB driver. Firewire seemed to be and is that answer. Uncompressed video from the camera to the PC should yield better results and at Firewire transfer rates, 30fps is doable. My regrets about this Firewire camera are:
1. High lux (less than 5) rating requires more light than I am willing to use indoors
2. Production quality appears to vary from unit to unit based on my heads up comparison with my 2 iBots
3. The wire foot-shaped camera base is not that stable when place on top of a monitor that is not flat on the top and has a bezel that is less than 2" deep.
4. The Firewire cord comes right out of the back of the round camera. And like the Logitech camera, it is very hard to maintain a specific camera position. A better bet would have been a sturdier base with the wire coming of it.
Yes, I will keep the iBot (at least the better of the 2 I bought). I'll point it out the window of my home office and it will be the Front Yard cam. Lot's of light outdoors.
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