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    How much battery do HD cams eat up ?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Maikky, Jul 15, 2013.

  1. Maikky

    Maikky Notebook Consultant

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    I've been searching everywhere for this info, but how much do the HD cams on laptops average eat up ?

    I ask because I skipped on a touch option of a laptops in hopes that motion-sensing like pointgrab and stuff in the near-feature . I know it won't be perfect but for touch I was going to use it mostly for scrolling .
     
    Maikky, Jul 15, 2013
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  2. maverick1989

    maverick1989 Notebook Deity

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    The camera hardware actually doesn't require much power. Laptop camera's are connected via the USB bus which means at the most 2-4 watts of power. That is not much.

    That being said, while the camera won't need much power, the operations you perform on the incoming images - any image processing algorithms - are run on the CPU or GPU which would need power and the requirement would depend on what algorithms you are running. Using motion sensing applications once in a while might not hurt but if you are planning on controlling your mouse pointer that way, it could run down your battery in less than an hour.
     
    maverick1989, Jul 15, 2013
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