evans@mhuxt.UUCP (crandall) (09/15/84)
<> I recently had the opportunity to try the Macintosh version of the MicronEye solid-state camera. The unit consists of a small cylinder which houses the sensor (actually a 64 k ram), a lens which screws onto the cylinder, and a box containing a frame grabber. All of this is exceedingly small - the camera is < 2" dia and 4" long. A cable plugs into the modem port of the Mac and a disk with some "image analysis" software completes the deal. This unit is strictly 2 grey levels. The thresholds are set by playing with the lens f-stop, lighting, and/or the frame grabber integration time. Special continuous sample-and-display routines ease the task of focusing and exposure. Once an image is acquired you can do a few simple things to it: invert it, - and + images, filling routines that set bits according to the state of their nearest neighbors, edge smoothing, and outlining. The final product can be saved as a MacPaint document for further fudging. The unit works as advertised. In a normal room with standard office illumination I found I needed 3 second exposure times to record very contrasty subjects. (The exposure time can be varied from 0.001 - 9.999 seconds). The recorded area is very small - I would guess it to be about 128 x 256 pixels. No technical details were supplied - I gather that programming tools are provided for the Apple ][, RS, and IBM variants of this product. All in all it is a neat toy, although I don't think I'd cough up the $400 to buy one myself. It will be interesting to see how the digitizers that interface to standard TV cameras work with the Mac. Now that 512k Macs are available, perhaps someone will give us 4 grey levels/pixel (for starters). Steve Crandall ihnp4!mhuxt!evans