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I managed to salvage a webcam from a broken laptop, and I'm looking to use it to record video in a small package to attach to a rocket. However, I need to record the video to some data medium like a usb drive or SD card. How would I go about recording camera data to an SD card or flash drive without special hardware like an Arduino? Is there some kind of board I can use specifically for this purpose? Even better, is there a way I can salvage a component like this? Thanks!

CrafterOfWorlds
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  • The answer is no, it would not be worth your time, you could spend upwards of 100 hours to get it working and it would take some reverse engineering. Part of the 'rules' of this site is you do research before you post, I found these posts that would have answered your question http://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=camera+webcam – Voltage Spike Jun 02 '16 at 21:47
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    Possible duplicate of [Reusing Webcam and Monitor from old laptop](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/27415/reusing-webcam-and-monitor-from-old-laptop) – Voltage Spike Jun 02 '16 at 21:48

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Webcams have video compression and USB protocol "baked in" to the integrated circuits it is made from. That means the video is not accessible unless you are speaking the proper USB protocol, and it takes a microcontroller or microprocessor or computer to do that.

There are very tiny video cameras that have actual video output (vs converted to USB) and those are suitable to connect to a transmitter so you can view/record the video back on the ground. There are even very tiny video cameras with built-in recording to a micro SDHC card, etc. Those would seem more suitable for use in a mobile device like a rocket, drone, aircraft, vehicle, boat, submarine, animal, etc.

USB "webcams" are not suitable for the kind of application you are asking about. Virtually all of the cameras built into phones and laptop computers actually connect to the processor via an internal USB connection. And the ones that don't likely have a more complex interface that would be difficult to deal with in something small and light enough to go aloft in a rocket.

Richard Crowley
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