ELP-USB500W02M-L170

I bought this to use on my Ubuntu Linux system that is configured with the Motion DVR security program. Note that this camera does NOT come with a mount so I made a little mount by welding a nut on to a steel angle and putting a screw through this along with a plastic camera nut I had in my junk drawer. It is a standard threaded camera mount, you can buy security camera mounts on Amazon. The camera is NOT waterproof. On the left picture you can see the camera mounted to my garage window. In the middle you can see a picture of the back yard and on the right is the same picture after fisheye correction using the free Gimp program under Windows in conjunction with the MathMap image processing filter. (which is also free) Load Gimp, install MathMap, load the picture, then Filters, Distorts, Lens Distortion, click Preview, and move the Main slider to the left and the Edge slider to the right, then export the picture. The fisheye allows for me to capture an entire view of the backyard with the single camera. I bought this camera from the Amazon "used/returns" system for 50% off. When the camera came it did not fully power up. I fixed this by unplugging the in-line plug in the camera cord and plugging it back in. (there is a separate connect/disconnect in the cord about a foot from the camera itself) That apparently removed a bit of oxidization on the connector contacts and corrected the problem. The camera does have a little rubber lens cap on it to prevent damage during shipping. The camera lens does stick out a bit from the box, several of the Amazon pictures are incorrect. The max resolution of this camera is 2592x1944 at 15fps using MJPG and 3 fps using YUYV. The max fps is 30. It will go to 1280x1024 at 30fps in MJPG and 800x600 at 30fps in YUYV Several other caveats with this and other high resolution USB 2.0 cameras in this application: a) You can only put 1 of these per USB host controller otherwise Motion issues a "resources in use" error message. Use the command "usb-devices" under Linux and move the camera from USB port to USB port until you have it on a different controller than any other high speed USB cameras b) Decompressing MJPG streams from multiple USB cameras under Motion will max your computer's CPU and cause white streaks to appear in the picture. I have success running this camera on YUYV and another high speed USB camera plugged into the same PC under MJPG c) The camera has auto-focus so if it is behind a window like mine is you need to make sure the window glass is perfectly clean or the camera will focus on dirt on the windows glass and not the image. It is also possible to shut off the autofocus and manually input the focus adjustment, I had to do that in order to prevent the camera from changing focus during the day and triggering the motion detection. d) If autoexposure is shut off the camera exposure can be raised to 5000. However, while this may be OK to take a picture of the night sky it's useless for nighttime security motion detection work. This camera does not have an IR emitter and cameras behind window glass do not generally work using IR due to IR bounce off the glass. In summary this is a fantastic value for the money (even more so since I got mine as a return). But, this camera is intended for the serious hobbyist, there is no software whatsoever in the box. If all you want to do is use it to take some interior pictures you can download a trial version of YouCam from cyberlink dot com and let it revert to Youcam Express and this camera will work with that.

I bought this camera to detect barcodes in images and found out it's not suited for the task. Basically, using software that detected barcodes in images captured with my cell phone or via Logitech c920, I couldn't detect barcodes in images captured with this camera. I am not sure why. Maybe it's the wide angle curvature or insufficient resolution or limited ability to handle low light conditions. The camera does have several advantages, hence 3 stars. 1. plug'n'play. I connected it to my Mac, and it worked right away. 2. The picture quality is actually quite decent (just wasn't enough for me). 3. The wide angle gives you a broad field of vision.

Camera is good, works as described. Needs better lens. Lots of barrel distortion.

This is a great camera. Seller ships from China and it arrived in the same time as a domestic UPS package shipped the same day! The camera is super simple to setup, I downloaded Debut (free software) for the UTC interface on my Windows 7 computer. Windows 7 automatically found the correct driver and installed it within seconds. Debut found the camera immediately and I was taking video in less than 1 minute. This camera is excellent in low light conditions and I actually adjusted the brightness in Debut because the picture was brighter than I needed. It seems plenty durable with the aluminum hosing. I am using it in my woodturning shop to video my hollowing and other work. Great picture. Not quite as clear as the GoPro Hero 3 I was using but plenty enough quality for my needs. It is also small and comes with over 9 ft. of USB cable. Uses little memory compared the GoPro. One minute video (30 fps) 10.6 mb. This camera is a great value and I don't think you can beat the overall package of shipping, value, and quality, anywhere. Great deal! If you need a video camera for CCTV this is the one! Not sure about durability yet but if it doesn't turn out to be as durable as I think it is, I will update this review.

Defective out of the box, wires seem crimped or damaged and unit would not stay on

I wanted to take pictures from the Linux terminal/command line of sunset and sunrise skies. This module worked fine with cheese (a GUI front end) and with streamer, a command line prog. I finally moved on to using fswebcam which is also a command line program, it grabbed the best pictures and is highly configurable. To take a picture: fswebcam -r 2048x1536 --jpeg 85 -D 1 web-cam-shot.jpg Highly recommended!

Camera comes on small 1x1 chip -- NO mounts, heavy stiff data cable .... makes camera hard to position and keep in position. Aperature is wide angle, making everything small (needs to be a more normal lens aperture). Expect to do a lot of accessory work to make functional. Not a turnkey device by any stretch.

4 stars only for size. I was looking for as small as possible usb cam. Other than that - nice. I actually bought 3 of them for my small robotic project. works with UVC. I use AForge.