OpenMaze.org

PS3eye

​

Even though it is no longer used widely for gaming, the Sony Playstation camera PS3eye has become a favorite of computer vision hackers because of its high framerate (up to 187fps!, at lower res), low price (<$10!!!) and ease of lens replacement. 

​

While it needs 3rd party drivers for Windows computers (available for a small fee from CodeLabs), I think it works fine on Linux without and there are an increasing number of open-source tools to acquire and process video feeds for capture or online computer vision. Easily downloadable libraries in Processing are now available, for instance, and the new flow-field NMF behavioral analysis in CaImAn (Simons Foundation) uses these.

​

Lenses and mounts are available from Amazon (M12 security camera size), which allow you to easily replace the IR filter and lenses for IR/"night vision" in a variety of configurations.

See these instructions on replacing lenses.

​

NEW

PS3eye cameras now have support on Processing using the Diewald library in the main package repository and also are supported by the Bonsai behavioral tracking software..

You can also now easily find M12 lenses (also used for security cameras) on Amazon, as well as infrared light sources for behavioral monitoring in the dark. Note that you will have to replace the lens mount, however most M12 lens mounts on Amazon have different hole spacing from the PS3eye and you must therefore either drill the PS3eye board to fit, or find the correct spacing elsewhere, like m12lenses.com. 

​

NOTE (Nov. 2021)

As of now, the PS3eye is no longer available for the <$10 price that it's been at for the last 10yrs, so unfortunately this cheap and fast camera is no longer an option for high-speed behavioral video. We are thus currently exploring the use of Raspberry Pi single-board computers for high-speed video acquisition (more to come).