Microcontroller and a CMOS camera?

[nijmegen96]

Hello everyone,
I'm starting a new project. I'm making a robot that will solve a Rubik's cube. I think i have every thing down on how I'm going to do it, but I'm stuck on one thing. I having trouble finding a way to detect the different colors on all the sides. When I search "Rubik's cube solving robot" I get plenty of results however, it seems a majority of them consist of Lego's and smartphones. I won't be using either of those things. I also found a robot made entirely of Lego's and it used the Lego color sensor and then a robot made entirely from scratch but it needed a computer to process the image from the camera and then think of a solution. So I want the use a camera but I don't it attached to a computer just do everything it self. Can a microcontroller process the image and make a solution from it? If so that leads to another question. I saw a post about color sensor vs camera and they said that a CCD camera would be better than a color sensor. So it did a little search and I'm sure they are for sale online but I only found the CMOS camera for sale. Will this work the same way as a CCD camera? All it needs to do is recognize a a 3 by 3 grid. Any help is appreciated. Also I'm new to the engineering portion of robotics but I'm not to bad at programming.
Thanks

[nijmegen96]

In a nutshell, can I use this with an 8-bit microcontroller to recognize the 3 by 3 grids of a Rubik's cube?

http://www.robotshop.com/sfe-cmos-camera-1300-1040-1.html

[billhowl]

8-bit microcontroller not build for image processing, it only have few Kbytes of RAM but image processing need much more then that, like the cmos camera in your llink was a 1.3Mega pixels need about 1.3Mbytes of RAM pre frame of image storage. 

You will have better luck using ARM processor like the beagleboard using the TI ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

[nijmegen96]

OK, well is anything else I can do instead of that CMOS camera so that I don't have to change the microcontroller? Can I upgrade the RAM?

[nijmegen96]

Also I haven't built the microcontroller yet. Can make one that can handle pictures for less than $100? It just needs to hold 6 pictures (one for each side of the cube) and little extra for making a "map" of the cube and a solution.

[billhowl]

Estimate how much memory you are going to need, and how much processing, and you should see why the 8-bit microcontroller isn't suitable.
microcontroller, not a microprocessor.  It is best at controlling things.  You had search the web and found nobody using microcontroller alone for the processing because isn't suitable.
You might more interested in a Raspberry Pi if you really need for less then $100, it cost $25 to $35 but you have to wait.

[nijmegen96]

Alright thank you. I guess I needed someone to spell it out for me  . I have got to come up with a new plan... . Do you guys have any suggestion to color sensors? I see then being made cheaply on the internet, but I'm worried about it being accurate with so many colors in the 9x9 grid. Would it have to scan each sticker or could it scan the whole face of the cube? Also would it need to flash different colored leds to get the color right or just one color like red or infrared? The ones that i can make use 3 leds or a RGB led, but the lego ones use red.

I basically want to build something that does exactly this but with out legos.

http://tiltedtwister.com/tiltedtwister2.html