A camera off a $50 budget phone will probably beat every $100 webcam on the market. So why can't I get that same camera module, minus the phone parts but plus a usb interface, for $100.
I bought one of these for using with my lab microscope since the alternatives from thorlabs was 10x more expensive for no reason. It worked fine for a year then it stopped working. Maybe I spillled something on it? Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Are you playing with it in a garage or in an academic / industrial setting?
I'm not yet ready to start but my goal is to try and set up an actually productive garage lab - maybe use some neighbouring univ core facility on occasion but not to set up a lab there. Not a fan of academia in general and hope to not contribute money/ideology towards perpetuating that ponzi scheme!
I'd say that for most real scientists, it makes more sense to raise the funding to buy a professional scope because a lot of the dumbness is engineered out so scientists can just sit down and be productive.
Most of these [machine vision] cameras will communicate using genicam, so you can use libraries like Aravis and maybe there's a way of getting that to talk to V4L.
Plus for many cameras you need to capture their video output, i.e. USB is not enough (through that currently changes). So you need a capture chip with low latency or else things are bad for "life" usage. This is often another 60-130€ for something decent if brought anew.
Plus they don't have a monitor clip so you need buy an additional stand.
Sure you can buy used parts but then you also need to compare it with used part prices for webcams which normally (i.e. non Covid19) are also lower.
I mean a Sony a5100 with usable objective currently sells new for ~US$700 but you can probably get it new for that price with capture card and stand if you buy clever and we ignore Covid19 for fairness.
(And even used you are still far above 250€ for any recent decently usable mirror less camera with objective in my experience.)
If you already own one, then it might be an option. But buying a GoPro to get a better webcam doesn't really make sense.
It has great linux support and works great with OBS (and its chroma key filter)
I tried it with my phone and latencies made it unusable for video-conference usages. Given that this is my main usage reasonable low latenzies are for me much more important then super good image quality. So when I had to buy one recently I ended up with a ~70€ not super good but not bad webcam. I thing normally I might have bought something like a C920 but prices-return ratio was just madness when I bought (sight, Covid19 madness ;=) )
I've never seen a <$300 Moto phone match a $100 Logitech webcam.
https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Studio-GSM-Unlocked-Smartphone/dp...
There is one for $70 on amazon that might be a contender. I'm sure if I searched aliexpress or something I could find something better for even cheaper.