Ask HN: Machine Vision Advice

[yogione]

I just got a machine vision project. I need to capture video of component testing, convert it to avi files. I need to be able to start/stop camera recording with a pulse, tranfer the data to a pc, render the video for analysis. Looking for advice/on-line resources regarding camera selection and camera control software Thanks.

[noonespecial]

Check out the zoneminder project.

http://www.zoneminder.com/

It doesn't do what you need, but its fully open source and its made of all of the stuff you will need to do what you want.