Picolo Tymo - Capture Card

danmilward · Post by **danmilward** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 6:12 am

Has anybody used the Picolo Tymo on a linux distribution yet? I'm considering testing one but it is a lot of money to spend upfront and I'm not sure what the benefits are (other then size) over any of the other video capture cards.

I'd love to see some demo pics!!

Ciao,

Dan

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 3:58 pm

Curtis is generally very good about supporting his product, so it should work. That said, I don't know what is special about it other than the half height, and the non-standard connector. However, the PCIE x1 card on the manufactures website looks very interesting... So Curtis, what is the deal with these guys?

curtishall · Post by **curtishall** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 12:12 am

Euresys is neat. Their products are expensive compared to other capture cards however their switching time (if you use their "multi-cam" software) is next to nothing on the Tymo and 0ms on their Alert cards. Their cards can also do 640x480 (up to 720x480) @ 30FPS without alot of the interfacing problems that plague most BT878 cards.

I _almost_ had them talked into porting their Multi-cam drivers into Zoneminder but I haven't gotten a response from Phil on that topic so that is currently on hold. I also willing to pay to get their "multi-cam" driver ported into Zoneminder which will allow for their other cards to work (including their MPEG-4 card).

Euresys has damn good support and is based in the US. The head guy has offered to come down and visit with me however the last time he passed through I was out and missed him.

Also the PV- cards are keyed as both 3.3V and 5V however are just 5V and will not work in a PCI-X slot and will not work in servers (I have a special version on most of the cards to fix the server problem...but it shouldn't be this way).

Lee Sharp wrote:Curtis is generally very good about supporting his product, so it should work. That said, I don't know what is special about it other than the half height, and the non-standard connector. However, the PCIE x1 card on the manufactures website looks very interesting... So Curtis, what is the deal with these guys?

danmilward · Post by **danmilward** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:14 am

We want to use three cameras like so:

1) Camera one will capture people running (fast sprints) towards the camera

2) Camera two will capture people running under the camera (so this camera will be pointing straight down)

3) Camera three will capture people running away

Do you think that most standard video cards and cameras will be quick enough to capture everything (in / under / away). Or would I need something like the Picolo Tymo.

These guys can run fast

curtishall · Post by **curtishall** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:31 pm

If the system is decently fast any four port card could do this @ 320x240 and perhaps higher resolution.

danmilward wrote:We want to use three cameras like so:

1) Camera one will capture people running (fast sprints) towards the camera

2) Camera two will capture people running under the camera (so this camera will be pointing straight down)

3) Camera three will capture people running away

Do you think that most standard video cards and cameras will be quick enough to capture everything (in / under / away). Or would I need something like the Picolo Tymo.

These guys can run fast

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:32 pm

I am wondering if the browser stream can keep up... This will be a challenge.

danmilward · Post by **danmilward** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:25 pm

Yikes. I hope it can keep up - people wont be watching it live though. It is for us to look at the information later.

All the frame by frame images will be emailed to me for analysis.

Will this make things better for me?

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 11:08 pm

Much! Streaming 4 30fps videos is a resource pig! If you are going to extract the images and make a movie on a local PC, it should be quite easy for a modern PC to keep up.

danmilward · Post by **danmilward** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 11:20 pm

The CPU is a 1.5ghz mini ITX board with 1gig of Ram. We chose this board because it has no moving parts.. this is important because the solution runs off a battery.

I don't think that there is a faster mini ITX board without moving parts (fan). Maybe the only thing we can do is beef it up with 2gigs of Ram. Would that make a difference?

Ciao,

Dan

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:32 am

i think that 30fps is pushing it for that board, id say 15 fps max, maybe 20 with no motion detection etc but you will deffo need mmx to go above 10fps

danmilward · Post by **danmilward** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:49 am

Hi James. Sorry for being dumb but what do you mean by mmx - hopefully 15 frames per second will be enough to capture all the data we need.

If we want to record somebody sprinting down a running lane would it make more sense to have just one motion detection zone at the start of the track to trigger the recording. And then just record for a set period of time as opposed to having one long motion detection zone the length of the track?

If we know they will never be in a zone for more then 30 seconds then would it make sense to do this. Does ZM even support this.

Also my last question has got to be... if this board is going to be pushing it are there any other fanless or low power consuming boards that would be able to do this. Paying for the board is not a worry - I just need to make it work.

danmilward · Post by **danmilward** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:58 am

What about this dual core board?
http://www.mitxpc.com/proddetail.asp?pr ... 500&cat=53

My only worry is that it has a fan

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:45 pm

OK, to start, stop thinking small... Those via boards are fantastic at small, they just don't perform well. If you have the space, get a full sized board and case. Now get a nice zalman flower. (Big huge overclockers heatsink.) Put a very slow fan on it. Do not add a video card at all. Use a laptop hard drive. Use one of the 12 volt computer power supplies. You now have a mostly fanless system with only slightly more power draw than a via, but a lot more raw power when needed. As to CPU, the mobile versions of both AMD and Intel are very power sipping... However, finding a compatible motherboard can be a challenge.