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I very recently started playing with Mindstorms and have used the sensors that was provided along with the NXT 2.0 set. I'm planning to work on something on the lines of image processing and I need a camera for this. Is there a way I can interface the NXT Brick with a webcam so that the Brick can send instructions to the webcam as to when to capture the image? Are there other better methods of using webcams and Mindstorms together?

Anything along those lines would be helpful. Any pointers to good reading materials would also be helpful.

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  • The original Mindstorm's had the "Vision Command" extension that enabled you to use a LEGO-ised webcam with your RCX brink - however the USB cam needed to be attached to the PC, which rather limited the movement, and then the VC software interfaced with the RCX for you.
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid ♦
    Jul 29, 2013 at 10:10
  • What do you want to do? The NXT processing power and memory is limited after all. Do you want to have the webcam connected directly to the NXT, or will it be connected to a computer? If you go with the latter it is highly language specific, as you need libraries to interact with the NXT and the webcam. If you need the first I think NXTCam is the only option currently.
    – Sebastian Wahl
    Jul 31, 2013 at 11:53
  • The latter, most probably. While I haven't thought through it, I was thinking if I could use a phone to capture an image. For example, the brick will trigger an app on the phone via Bluetooth (or something else?). The app will switch on the camera, take the picture and do something with it. Or if I use a webcam, it may just stream a video to my computer or something. This maybe just one of the things that can be done. I don't know.
    – Prateek Kulkarni
    Jul 31, 2013 at 12:37

3 Answers 3

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I would go and give a try to leJOS http://lejos.org/ if you can write Java.

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  • Yeah, I ended up using leJOS. Thanks anyway.
    – Prateek Kulkarni
    Jul 18, 2014 at 18:54
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IMHO your best bet is to use Mindsensors' NXTCam

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  • Yeah. But the communication can only be between the brick and NXTCam right? I can't do complex processing on the brick. I need a computer to do that.
    – Prateek Kulkarni
    Jul 31, 2013 at 12:40
  • @PrateekKulkarni Use Bluetooth and Java.
    – Timtech
    Oct 11, 2013 at 14:30
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If you could use a PC as intelligent robot brick, I would suggest you:

  • standard web-cam
  • OpenCV (for image processing)
  • nxt-python
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