The Eye Toy USB Camera is actually a digital camera device, similar to a webcam, created for some games to be played on the PlayStation 2. The Eye Toy USB Camera process images by using technology such as computer vision and movement recognition. Playstation 2 video games which contain the Eye Toy USB enhancement module allow players to interact with the games using motion sensing, color as well as sound detection, through its built-in microphone. In some video games, the Eye Toy USB Camera can be used to map your face onto the characters inside the game! In this hub of mine, I will showcase some of the games that you can play with the Eye Toy USB Camera, as well as how to purchase the Eye Toy USB Camera itself. If you are interested in other USB Toys, you might want to check out my other USB Toys hub instead.

The Eye Toy USB camera is mounted on a pivot, allowing its field of vision to be adjusted. One can also focus the camera by rotating a ring around the lens, similar to a normal camera. The Eye Toy USB camera also comes with two LED lights on the front. One will be able to see a blue light when the PlayStation 2 is switched on. The presense of this light indicates that the Eye Toy USB camera is ready to be used. For optimal performance of the Eye Toy USB Camera, it is to be used in a well-lit room, to allow the USB Toy camera to detect the motion of the player as they play the video game. The other LED light is red in colur and LED it flashes when it is too dark, to inform the gamer that more light is needed. There is also a microphone built into the Eye Toy USB Camera.

The PlayStation 2 Eye Toy USB Camera is manufactured by Logitech, but newer PlayStation 2 Eye Toys are manufactured by Namtai. Hence, you might want to purchase the newer Eye Toy USB Camera Namtai, instead of the older Logitech Eye Toy USB Camera.

As mentioned in my opening paragraph, this USB toy camera is supposed to be used for playing EyeToy games developed by Sony and other companies. It was never really intended to be used as a normal PC web camera, although there are websites online that allow people to download unofficial drivers to convert the Eye Toy USB Camera into a PC webcam.

To provide a brief background on the Eye Toy USB Camera, it was actually conceived by a person named Richard Marks in 1999, after witnessing a demonstration of the PlayStation 2 at the 1999 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Marks had this idea to develop games which allow natural user interface and mixed reality video game applications using an inexpensive webcam. The software would employ the computational power of the PlayStation 2. Richard Marks joined Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) that year, and what happened after that was very much history. One of the first software titles to be developed using the new found technology was EyeToy: Play. EyeToy: Play was released with the Eye Toy USB Camera in a bundle in 2003. By the end of the year, the Eye Toy USB Camera had sold over 2 million units in Europe and 400,000 units in the United States. That was EyeToy history!

Subsequently, EyeToy: Play 2 was released in 2004. EyeToy: Play 2 is the second PlayStation 2 game in the EyeToy: Play series. The game contains twelve new minigames, that allow for single or multi-player modes. EyeToy Play 2 also takes advantage of some EyeToy capabilities that the original game did not, such as being able to detect the speed and force of motion, and increased accuracy. One game which was introduced was Baseball, where points can be awarded for more forceful hitting of the ball.

"PlayStation" is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "EyeToy" is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. "eyetoy" is a trademark filed by TOMY in Japan and covers the specification of goods for photographic apparatus and instruments.

EyeToy: Cameo is a system for allowing players to include their own images as avatars in other games. Games would have a head scanning program that can be used to generate a 3D model of the player's head, to be used as an image in the game. This image can even be stored on a memory card, for use by other games that support the Cameo feature.