Sony PlayStation Eye Camera (Bulk Packaging)

You buy it, you get the software (CL-eye), and you work it. -physical- This thing weighs quite a bit. It dropped off my monitor and it made a preeeeety big thud. The webcam still works though. Cable is maybe too long for desktop usage, and WAY too long for laptop usage. Mine had a ferrite clamp on it. The bottom of the product is some kind of felt-ish material. Provides better grip than bare plastic. -technology- The camera itself is very high framerate. With the CL-Eye drivers, you can boost it above 120 frames per second. However, basic photography notes that with higher shutter speed, the image gets darker. So don't go trying to film 120fps shots at night. The mic. Its advertised as beam-forming/directional; The mics themselves cannot form a noise-cancellation map, the software is supposed to. Since this was never actually supposed to work with anything other than a PS3, then there is none. And plus, the mics sound like butt anyway. Since there are 4 mics, then are 4 pickups. If you sit the camera on a desk that is shaking from bass, any program listening in on the quad-mic is going to suffer clipping. Everything will sound like its in a castle, echoing from the massive concrete walls. My friends said I sounded like a king though, so that was cool. -notes- If you want to use multiple Playstation Eye cameras for the PC, you'll need to get CL-Eye's special software to support multiple cameras. The free version is only one supported. This will only matter to a small amount of people. Most of that small party will probably be doing 3D motion capture for rigs.

It is amazing how old this camera is and yet how awesome the quality is. It IS only 640x480 resolution BUT the FPS is incredibly high, well over 120 i believe. This enables you to use it for all kinds of projects, such as head tracking, 3D scanning, etc. It also has a great wide-array mic and if you are after microphone,= for Cortana or Alexa on PC, this works perfectly also, and performs as good as $50+ mics. One thing to note.. it is NOT Plug and Play.. this is for the PS3 not PC, but quite a few driver packs are available, CM is the most popular but costs, others are free keep that in mind.

Disclaimer: This review is targeted primarily at people who are considering this as a cheap PC webcam solution. If you're buying this for use on a PS3 I imagine it'll work as intended, and the numerous reviews you can find online in regards to its functionality and usefulness in PS3 games that support it would be more informative than my review. I bought this a while ago as a cheap way to get a webcam feed into my occasional Twitch broadcasts. A bit grainy, especially when the lighting is dimmer than it can handle, but it worked well enough for a small, high frame rate face cam feed in the corner of my broadcasts. It was an acceptable solution...while it lasted, at any rate. It would probably also be useful for a DIY head tracking setup. There is one large caveat, though: unless Microsoft decides to fix it, this won't work with newer builds of Windows 10. The unofficial windows driver (which hasn't been updated in years and probably won't be any time soon) was designed for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 and also initially worked with Windows 10...until Microsoft released an update that broke it along with other older webcams. Unless you've done your research and can confirm that the problem has been fixed (as far as I know, it hasn't as of writing this), do not buy this if you're running Windows 10.

I don't even own a PS3. This camera is strongly recommended for use with Free Track on a PC and for that it is working well. Set-up was easy and it does what it is supposed to do as far as Free-Track goes. I did not remove the IR filter and I don't know if the one I got is the easy or hard one to remove. I am using a piece of un-exposed, developed camera film with both sides covered in black magic marker as an IR bandpass filter. This is working reasonably well. The room I am using it in has windows from both sides and behind me so the light conditions are constanly changing during the day. This means I have had to adjust the settings as the light in the room changes. I am using a 3 point clip with wide angle IR LEDs. I am going to try running a little higher current to the LEDs to see if that will help with the ambient light conditions. But for now closing the curtains works good too. Of course if your not running Free-Track then none of this means anything to you.

Excellent quality. I got these cameras as an accessory for the IP-Motion capturing system instead of MS Kinects. You set up 6 or 8 of these cameras and you can do your own motion capturing. At this price, you can't beat it, but I also got an extra one as webcam for my office. the video quality is really amazing. There is a website out there where you can buy a driver to run this cam on a Windows 10 PC (didn't work on Windows 7 for me but later I discovered you cant use regular USB extension cables, so it might have been my fault). In any case if you are looking for a cheap and high quality webcam, use this over one of the 50$ brand name cams that don't do more either

update 3/29/15: Ordered a second one, also from SoulGood and this time it was the old "good" one that has an easier to deal with ir filter. So the moral is you are flipping a coin as to the version you get. I bought this for use with ir tracking using freetrack, opentrack, etc. The vendor I used was SoulGood, so this may be different for other vendors. The product works well using cl-eye software, which is about $2 now. I received the "bad" version, which just means the ir filter is not easily removed. I did manage to remove the vast majority of the ir blocking coating by polishing the glass on the inside of the lens with toothpaste and cutips. I used a drill to do the real work here as it requires quite a bit of polishing to remove most of the coating. Then I used a piece of old floppy disk to cover the lens on the outside and held it on with a water bottle cap that happened to fit it. Result? Perfect 3 point ir tracking system using opentrack via the freetrack protocol. Elite dangerous is now a lot more immersive and it didn't cost me a ton of money. pros: 1. Cheap. Like wow.. this has to be below cost kind of cheap. 2. Super high fps. You can get it to go upwards of 180 hz I think. I set mine to 100 or 120. Anything more seems silly since my monitor is 60hz. 3. It has built in audio, although I never use it. I am not sure how well it works, but it has 4 mics to supposedly work well in a noisy environment. 4. There are cheap clips for it that are less than $5 with prime shipping to hook i cleanly to a tv or monitor. 5. Pretty easy to take apart and put back together. 6. Works decently as a normal webcam. Super smooth fps and a decent picture quality. 7. The lens on the front is shaped in a way that makes pushing something to hold a light blocking filter on it really simple. 9. Also works for the ps3 of course... if anyone ever uses it for that. 8. Cheap. Did I mention it is stupidly cheap? I have had hamburgers that cost more than this thing recently. Cons: 1. Requires custom non free drivers for use with a pc. They are cheap at $2, but still a downer. 2. The one I got is the newer version. That sounds great but it isn't if you plan to remove the ir filter. 3. Because it is a bit top heavy a clip is really recommended to hold it. 4. It looks a bit silly with the big mic section and the tiny lens, but it is black and will vanish when you turn the lights out for gaming anyway. 5. For regular webcam use it is only 640x480. Decent but not great. Super smooth fps though.

I'm using this with Kinovea - a motion capture package for high speed analysis of sports videos. I have it capturing 640 x 480 x 75 FPS and it's working great, especially given the crappy lighting in my home weight lifting gym. I've gone as high as 320 x 240 x 187FPS however it looks a bit crappy at that resolution. But so does everything else. The point is - it can do it and it's an exceptionally good webcam for this application. The packaging is non existent, but really, who cares about that one day after it's been opened? It does work with my PS3 if you were wondering so as far as I can tell it's the real thing. I'm going to buy at least one more. The cable is a bit stiff which can make positioning it awkward - I'm going to buy some velcro tabs to fix it. I don't know that the retail pack is any different.

I got this for OpenTrack IR 120 fps camera. This is the PS3 version you don't want with the domed lens. I am working on removing the IR filter inside the lens as this one needs to be cut out where the other one just peels off. I'll give it 3 stars because this is not it's intended use and the listing never listed the model number so it was a gamble to buy it in the first place.