I want to hook up a camera to my arduino (need help)

[sonictj]

I am what is considered a noob.  I bought a arduino board recently and I keep coming up with robot designes I want to build, but they all would greatly benefit from a camera.  I have my eye on the CMU CAM 3.  I plan on using the CMU CAM 2 emulation at first, and then make my own algorithms.  I've looked into the avr cam too, but it sounds like   I would have more trouble making it work. 

Anyways I wanted to know if anyone has interfaced the CMU CAM 3 to an arduino diecimila before, and do I have to do anything more than just get a serial to usb cord to run the camera on the diecimila. (The arduino's UART is USB).

Some plans on how I will use the camera.

1. making a robot you can play fetch with lol via a ball of a specific color.
2. a good line follower.
and many other things I can't think of right now.

NOTE. I know i can do those things with other cameras.  I just want the investment of a camera I can program totally myself.

[sonictj]

has anyone used a cmu cam with an arduino usb board?

[Admin]

You won't be able to connect to the camera via USB . . .

But, if you aren't using USB, you can connect the tx/rx wires directly from the ATmega to the tx/rx of your camera. You'd have to disconnect it however if you wanted to use the USB . . .

My ERP uses the Blackfin Camera, which is cheaper than the CMUcam3 . . .

[sonictj]

Thanks I'll look into that Blackfin camera too.