Video Input

A digital camera takes still photos but records the pictures on computer disks or memory chips. The information contained can be uploaded to a computer for viewing.
A video camera or recorder (VCR) can record data that can be uploaded to the computer with the right hardware. Though it is not digital data, you can still get good results with the right software.
Both of these take huge amounts of storage. Photos make for very large files.

QuickCam by Connectix is a newcomer to the video world. It is a tiny video camera designed especially to sit on your computer. It feeds pictures directly to the computer - no tape or film to develop. Of course you are limited by the length of the cable that connects the camera to the computer. But like any camera, it will take a picture of what you point it at!

So what do people do with QuickCam? They use it for video conferencing over the Internet. They show the world what's going on outside their window (weather, traffic). They take digital pictures and make movies- family, pets, snow storms, birthday parties, whatever.

Data automation

The first goal of data automation is to avoid mistakes in data entry by making the initial entering of the data as automatic as possible. Different situations require different methods and equipment.

A second goal of data automation is to avoid having to re-enter data to perform a different task with it.

For example, the old style cash register would add up your purchase and calculate the tax. The clerk entered the amounts by hand (the data entry part). Later the numbers off the store copy of the cash register tapes would have to be added up manually, or entered into a computer program (another data entry task). For an up-to-date inventory someone would have to go count all the things on the shelves (a third data entry task). 

With modern data automation, using bar codes on every item in the store, a computer check-out register along with a bar code scanner will calculate the sale plus transfer the information directly to the computer that does the store bookkeeping plus adjust the inventory records by subtracting the items just sold. The human errors possible at each step of data entry are now avoided. Of course, there are still ways for errors to occur, just not as many. In addition,  a new feature is available with computerized cash registers - a receipt that states the name of the item bought as well as the price.

General Devices

Page scanner-	T he scanner works like a copy machine. It captures a whole page and converts it to digital image. It cannot be edited at this point.
Hand scanner-	Y ou move the device across the document or picture. It will capture only a section of a page or a large image. So the pieces of anything wider than the scanner would have to be recombined with some nifty software.

Special types of characters read with special devices
Bar Codes-	R etail shops now use printed bar codes on products to track inventory and calculate the sale at the checkout counter. The US Post Office uses bar codes to sort mail, but the bars are different from those used for pricing products.
Optical Marks-	e xample - test scoring A special machine "reads" the marks. Woe to the student who takes a test with this kind of score sheet and doesn't get those bubbles colored in correctly!
Magnetic Ink-	B ank account # is printed in special ink with magnetic qualities which can be read by the right machine.
Optical Characters-	T here are coding systems that use letters or special characters that are especially shaped to be easy for machines to read.