From: "milton_aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: April 14, 2010 2:30:20 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: USB Camera Support

Hi Folks;

I had an interesting conversation with some of the people at Point Grey Research today concerning their USB 2 / 3 cameras and some other things.

I can't get into any details on most of it, however I will be starting the process of getting a loaner USB 2 Chameleon camera so that I can look into USB 2 support for Astro IIDC. That may help out people with the non Firewire Macs, especially going forward when "Steve in his infinite wisdom" (not) will axe FireWire support, since according to him, "no one needs that".

I also found out an interesting tidbit on supplying power to PGR cameras. This mainly applies to USB 2 which barely provides enough power for a single camera over the wire, but it also applies to the FireWire cameras too. You can power your PGR camera using the GPIO pins, but there is a trick to it. The Camera will take power from which ever supplies the highest voltage. So if the GPIO on a USB 2 camera is providing say 5.3 volts, then power draws from the GPIO not off the wire.

I will have to look through their specs for the actual voltage numbers and pin outs, but it is promising for people where Apple "skimped" on the amperage / voltage they supply in their G3 / G4 Macs.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle