Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: cmcclellan on February 23, 2013, 09:25:11 AM

Title: Webcam Input
Post by: cmcclellan on February 23, 2013, 09:25:11 AM
Hi everyone, I'm about to start a MCU project that involves using a already hacked iRobot Roomba and taking video input. However, I'm trying to figure out how I would read the data from a webcam. I was thinking about hacking an old webcam so that it could give me an RGB output, but that would involve either using a usb connection, for which I don't know the commands, or creating an entirely new parallel connection which is in itself a project. Any suggestions? By the way memory and speed are not an issue as I'll be using the TI lms1968 which has a clock speed of 50Mhz and 265k of memory.
Title: Re: Webcam Input
Post by: jwatte on February 23, 2013, 10:06:45 PM
Actually, those are probably too small and slow to do actual video.
Even small video (320x240x24bpp) is going to fill your RAM (224 kb per frame) and CPU (7 cycles per pixel at 30 fps)

This is basic math you should be able to do before you start thinking about video.

A cheap and effective way of doing video is to use a usb webcams and a raspberry pi. That has enough ram and cpu to do something with it.
Title: Re: Webcam Input
Post by: cmcclellan on February 24, 2013, 08:10:21 AM
Oh wow! I'm ashamed to say I have never heard of raspberry pi but that looks like it could the the job done in double time. Thanks!