>> At that price-point, are there other devices on the market that already fulfill the need?
> No there aren't.
There are tons of cameras that meet this need. They're "machine vision" or "scientific" cameras, google for those. Edmund Scientific has a good selection. They're ridiculously expensive for what you get if you're comparing against a webcam or a surveillance camera since they're very similar to those for >10x the price. That's the price of low volume assembly, proper support, et cetera.
> No there aren't.
There are tons of cameras that meet this need. They're "machine vision" or "scientific" cameras, google for those. Edmund Scientific has a good selection. They're ridiculously expensive for what you get if you're comparing against a webcam or a surveillance camera since they're very similar to those for >10x the price. That's the price of low volume assembly, proper support, et cetera.