I'm interested in having two or more cameras precisely synchronized for machine vision purposes. All the global shutter cameras I've seen basically have two modes: free-running, with a maximum frame rate of X FPS, and triggered, with a maximum triggering rate of X/2 FPS.
This is a frustrating limitation. Shouldn't it be possible keep two free running cameras very closely synchronized using an external feedback controller? Each camera could pulse a pin letting you know when it's capturing a frame, and as long as there was a scheme for introducing a very slight delay into one or the other of them, you could nudge them together, similar to how the NTP daemon nudges a computer's clock.
Does anything like this exist? Is there a camera sensor or module out there which has the necessary rate control capability necessary for it?
Thanks for any thoughts or input.
Best Answer
One way to keep two cameras precisely synchronized is to send a genlock signal to both cameras.
"another application for which genlock is used is to ensure both sensors on two-camera 3D rigs fire at the same time." -- Timothy McDougal
Unfortunately, many good cameras do not have a genlock input.