In November 2005, Moritex (www.moritex.com) expects to ship its 1,000th PalmScope video capture device.
Originally introduced in 2003, the handheld PalmScope is a product, the makers report, for any application in which sequences of still images or video clips need to be captured and stored from a video source.
The firm adds that the product has been adopted by equipment manufacturers as a video capture device, in order to provide a integrated inspection, image capture and data archiving solution.
In combination with a SnakeEye camera system the product is providing a portable solution, the manufacturers add, for outdoor inspection, data capture and archiving of images from bridges and highways, drains and sewers, pipelines and plant maintenance. With a video microscope the PalmScope is providing manufacturers and users of fibre systems with a tool for inspecting, video recording and image storage of images of the ends of fibre connectors in-situ. In the healthcare sector the product is being used with endoscopes, borescopes and ultrasound equipment to produce and archive patient images in digital rather than analogue format.
Ongoing development
New applications include forensic analysis, police operations, and aerospace and automotive inspection and faultfinding.
The product captures still images or video clips onto a removable CompactFlash card. It is compatible with both PAL and NTSC, composite or S-video (optional) signals, the makers say. A built-in 6.5" TFT LCD display allows you to preview the video before saving it to the memory card. Video clips are captured at full NTSC or PAL resolution, at 30 or 25 frames per second (fps) respectively, and stored in Motion-JPEG (MJPEG) compressed format, allowing about three minutes of video to be stored on a 128MB CompactFlash card. Still images are stored in a compressed JPEG format, and 1000 images can be stored on a 128MB CompactFlash card. Storage capacity is limited only by the size of the CompactFlash card used, a 2GB card will hold many thousands of images or approximately 80 minutes of video. Captured images and video clips are automatically named with the date and a sequence label. Images can be organised with an overlay of up to 10 lines of text using an optional standard PC keyboard. The product includes a thumbnail gallery feature with cataloguing functions to help in archiving and retrieving images. Cataloguing functions help in archiving and retrieving them, including the ability to rename, delete and move or copy images between folders. An individual image may be selected for full size viewing. Or, images can be easily transferred to a PC where they can be displayed or processed by any suitable image editing software.
The product can be switched for left- or right-handed use and offers a choice of language for all on-screen display operations in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian.
