Orange Micro, maker of a wide array of Macintosh peripherals, has brought a FireWire web cam to the market. The iBot offers desktop users all the advantages of the blazingly fast FireWire standard, and allows users to capture images at up to 30 frames/second. According to Orange Micro:
Orange Micro has shipped its new iBOT Desktop Video Camera. It is the first FireWire 1394 web cam to hit the market. The iBOT has tremendous speed advantages compared to the older, USB technology based, web cams. The iBOT is currently the fastest web cam available because it operates on the 400 Mb/sec FireWire 1394 interface. Thus the users can display or capture full sized video on their computers (640 x 480 pixel resolution) at a full 30 frames/second. This is significantly faster than the current USB web cams, which can only run at 9 frames/second with a similar resolution.
The iBot FireWire camera is available for US$119. A Pro version, which includes a more complete software bundle, is available for US$149. You can find more information at the Orange Micro web site.