I’m looking for an affordable USB camera that can capture 10-bit of color.
The use case is I’m trying to use computer vision to identify and separate components on a PCB under black (ultraviolet) light. I’m using a black light to trigger photoluminescence on a varnish that is applied to the PCB.
The cheaper the sensor the more light you need to achieve the sensor’s maximum dynamic range (=differentiate between similar colors without noise)
Would it help your use case to do multiple passes of a PCB, one with UV light, one with intense high-CRI “natural” light and then combine both images to “see” everything?
Correct. We are using multiple passes, one with white light and another with the black light.
But for the varnish contrast we need the black light.
Now of curse a cheaper sensor needs more light and has lower SNR, but I meant affordable relative to the example I’m using right now. So right now we are using a ~100$ camera, I just don’t want the budget to balloon to tenfold.
Also the sensor we have right now can only output 8-bit colors. For our purposes wee need to delineate different areas and the contrast between colors caused by the photoluminescence of the varnish is the best way to do it. Hence why I ask for 10-bit USB camera suggestions.