On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:14:01 -0800 (PST), ":: aH[sIM] ::"
said:
>
> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam. I
> decided to use image sensors with documentation. Due to the lack of time,
> it's not worth the fuss to reverse engineer the webcam. But the thing
> is, I've contacted Omnivision which was used by the AVRCAM and CMUCAM
and
> requested sample image sensor from
> them but they are slow in responding. I'm worried that I might lose
> precious time while waiting for them.
>
> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would suggest?
>
> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at least
> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital format.
> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I know,
these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast, low-resolution
greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
interface.
Here's an example datasheet:
http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
Neil
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
Frame Grabber using FPGA thru webcam
Started by ●December 23, 2007
Reply by ●January 9, 20082008-01-09
Reply by ●January 10, 20082008-01-10
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:14:01 -0800 (PST), ":: aH[sIM]
::"
> said:
>>
>> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would
>> suggest?
>>
>> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at least
>> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital format.
>> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
> How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I know,
> these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast, low-resolution
> greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
> direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
> interface.
>
> Here's an example datasheet:
> http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
>
> I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
> from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
That's a possible way to go, some fellows at my university are doing some
experiments with mouse sensors at the moment, and if I got everything
correct, it's not very hard to get a picture out of the camera chip, but
there are some drawbacks:
- The resolution is not very high, the highest resolution I heard of so
far is 32x32 pixels, the Agilent chip with the datasheet above is only
16x16.
- The bitrate (depth) is not very high, most of the time it is only 6 bit
(64 grayscale levels).
- The samplerate is very high if the DSP does the processing, but the
debug mode of the DSP can only provide a handful of frames/sec (the debug
mode can be used to dump the picture from the sensor, but only a few
times/sec). But it the sensor chip is read directly (eliminating the DSP
completely), framerate should be not a problem at all.
If you'd like to ask them some questions, I can ask them for their email
addresses, and give them to you.
> Neil
Rolf
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
> said:
>>
>> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would
>> suggest?
>>
>> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at least
>> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital format.
>> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
> How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I know,
> these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast, low-resolution
> greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
> direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
> interface.
>
> Here's an example datasheet:
> http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
>
> I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
> from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
That's a possible way to go, some fellows at my university are doing some
experiments with mouse sensors at the moment, and if I got everything
correct, it's not very hard to get a picture out of the camera chip, but
there are some drawbacks:
- The resolution is not very high, the highest resolution I heard of so
far is 32x32 pixels, the Agilent chip with the datasheet above is only
16x16.
- The bitrate (depth) is not very high, most of the time it is only 6 bit
(64 grayscale levels).
- The samplerate is very high if the DSP does the processing, but the
debug mode of the DSP can only provide a handful of frames/sec (the debug
mode can be used to dump the picture from the sensor, but only a few
times/sec). But it the sensor chip is read directly (eliminating the DSP
completely), framerate should be not a problem at all.
If you'd like to ask them some questions, I can ask them for their email
addresses, and give them to you.
> Neil
Rolf
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
Reply by ●January 10, 20082008-01-10
I follow your suggestion and I just gave my two old mice in the
garage an operation. I found out it uses Pixart sensor the datasheet
can be found here http://www.datasheets.org.uk/pdf/pan101-datasheet/pan101-datasheet.html while the another mouse from Microsoft is using s2083, it's a DIP-8 IC. From this website http://www.ic2ic.com/search.jsp?sSearchWord=S2083&prefix=S it seems that it comes from agilent, but i cant find the datasheet for it.
A question on the sensor. Can it take image of an object
like say 10-20cm away? Cause, this kind of sensor suppose to capture image of a mouse pad which is very near to the sensor.---
----- Original Message ----
From: Rolf Viehmann
To: f...
Cc: s...@yahoo.com; n...@imap.cc
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 5:28:57 PM
Subject: Re: [fpga-cpu] Re: Frame Grabber using FPGA thru webcam
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:14:01 -0800 (PST), ":: aH[sIM] ::"
> said:
>>
>> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would
>> suggest?
>>
>> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at
least
>> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital
format.
>> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
> How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I
know,
> these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast,
low-resolution
> greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
> direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
> interface.
>
> Here's an example datasheet:
> http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
>
> I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
> from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
That's a possible way to go, some fellows at my university are doing
some
experiments with mouse sensors at the moment, and if I got everything
correct, it's not very hard to get a picture out of the camera chip,
but
there are some drawbacks:
- The resolution is not very high, the highest resolution I heard of so
far is 32x32 pixels, the Agilent chip with the datasheet above is only
16x16.
- The bitrate (depth) is not very high, most of the time it is only 6
bit
(64 grayscale levels).
- The samplerate is very high if the DSP does the processing, but the
debug mode of the DSP can only provide a handful of frames/sec (the
debug
mode can be used to dump the picture from the sensor, but only a few
times/sec). But it the sensor chip is read directly (eliminating the
DSP
completely), framerate should be not a problem at all.
If you'd like to ask them some questions, I can ask them for their
email
addresses, and give them to you.
> Neil
Rolf
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
garage an operation. I found out it uses Pixart sensor the datasheet
can be found here http://www.datasheets.org.uk/pdf/pan101-datasheet/pan101-datasheet.html while the another mouse from Microsoft is using s2083, it's a DIP-8 IC. From this website http://www.ic2ic.com/search.jsp?sSearchWord=S2083&prefix=S it seems that it comes from agilent, but i cant find the datasheet for it.
A question on the sensor. Can it take image of an object
like say 10-20cm away? Cause, this kind of sensor suppose to capture image of a mouse pad which is very near to the sensor.---
----- Original Message ----
From: Rolf Viehmann
To: f...
Cc: s...@yahoo.com; n...@imap.cc
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 5:28:57 PM
Subject: Re: [fpga-cpu] Re: Frame Grabber using FPGA thru webcam
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:14:01 -0800 (PST), ":: aH[sIM] ::"
> said:
>>
>> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would
>> suggest?
>>
>> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at
least
>> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital
format.
>> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
> How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I
know,
> these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast,
low-resolution
> greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
> direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
> interface.
>
> Here's an example datasheet:
> http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
>
> I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
> from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
That's a possible way to go, some fellows at my university are doing
some
experiments with mouse sensors at the moment, and if I got everything
correct, it's not very hard to get a picture out of the camera chip,
but
there are some drawbacks:
- The resolution is not very high, the highest resolution I heard of so
far is 32x32 pixels, the Agilent chip with the datasheet above is only
16x16.
- The bitrate (depth) is not very high, most of the time it is only 6
bit
(64 grayscale levels).
- The samplerate is very high if the DSP does the processing, but the
debug mode of the DSP can only provide a handful of frames/sec (the
debug
mode can be used to dump the picture from the sensor, but only a few
times/sec). But it the sensor chip is read directly (eliminating the
DSP
completely), framerate should be not a problem at all.
If you'd like to ask them some questions, I can ask them for their
addresses, and give them to you.
> Neil
Rolf
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
Reply by ●January 10, 20082008-01-10
> A question on the sensor. Can it take image of an
object
> like say 10-20cm away? Cause, this kind of sensor suppose to capture
image of a mouse pad which is very near to the sensor.---
Without a focusing lense, I don't see how it could produce much of an
image. Besides, the pixel count is too low.
Richard
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
> like say 10-20cm away? Cause, this kind of sensor suppose to capture
image of a mouse pad which is very near to the sensor.---
Without a focusing lense, I don't see how it could produce much of an
image. Besides, the pixel count is too low.
Richard
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
Reply by ●January 11, 20082008-01-11
--- In f..., John Kent wrote:
> I took a very quick look at the roborealm web site and saw the blob
tracker.
> I've ordered a book on mathematical algorithms for machine vision that
> I saw on wikipedia, so I hope I'll be able to brush up on my geometry
> and cross products and so on.
John,
So, how's it going with the book?
I think, perhaps, I skipped too many math courses in favor of hardware
design. I didn't even do that well with divergence when it was used
for Maxwell's Equations.
Maybe I would be better served by something at a more introductory
level like "Robot Vision" by Berthold.
Richard
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
> I took a very quick look at the roborealm web site and saw the blob
tracker.
> I've ordered a book on mathematical algorithms for machine vision that
> I saw on wikipedia, so I hope I'll be able to brush up on my geometry
> and cross products and so on.
John,
So, how's it going with the book?
I think, perhaps, I skipped too many math courses in favor of hardware
design. I didn't even do that well with divergence when it was used
for Maxwell's Equations.
Maybe I would be better served by something at a more introductory
level like "Robot Vision" by Berthold.
Richard
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
Reply by ●January 12, 20082008-01-12
Hi Richard,
I have not got to chasing up the book yet.
We have had days of 40+C heat here in Melbourne Australia last week,
(that's over 100F) and I don't have air conditioning, so I'm sweating it out
and don't feel like doing much.
I think I had the book Robot Vision, or something like it, but it's in
a bookshelf in the lounge room, which is off limits to me at the moment
because my little friend has her junk strewn over the floor.
I use a walking frame, so it's a little difficult to navigate through
the mess.
I'm not a great one for mathematics, which is why I'm buying the book.
I would like to undertake a PhD this year, finances willing, so need to
brush up on my maths. I'm particularly interested in the maths for graphics
rendering of 3D models.
Years ago, I bought a Sublogic wire frame graphics package for the 6800.
We used it for various primitive flight simulators on the 6800 and 6809
using a "chunky graphics" memory mapped display and Bressenham line
drawing routines. It was not real fast but at 1 MHz the system was still
fast enough to play a rudimentary 3D graphics game.
I guess the biggest speed up would be in implementing the line drawing
routines in hardware, but implementing a 3D perspective engine in an
FPGA would be pretty neat too. Having a mouse of tracker ball that
allowed you to rotate a wire frame mesh in real time would be pretty cool.
The next step would be to have hardware to warp and texture map surfaces
onto the wire frame. You'd need a Z buffer to prioritize occlusions, so that
you only rendered the front most surfaces.
There was an article in IEEE Computer I think last year on GPUs.
Much of the perspective and warping transformations would apply
to both the video input and video output devices.
John.
rtstofer wrote:
>
> John,
>
> So, how's it going with the book?
>
> I think, perhaps, I skipped too many math courses in favor of hardware
> design. I didn't even do that well with divergence when it was used
> for Maxwell's Equations.
>
> Maybe I would be better served by something at a more introductory
> level like "Robot Vision" by Berthold.
>
> Richard
>
--
http://www.johnkent.com.au
http://members.optushome.com.au/jekent
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
I have not got to chasing up the book yet.
We have had days of 40+C heat here in Melbourne Australia last week,
(that's over 100F) and I don't have air conditioning, so I'm sweating it out
and don't feel like doing much.
I think I had the book Robot Vision, or something like it, but it's in
a bookshelf in the lounge room, which is off limits to me at the moment
because my little friend has her junk strewn over the floor.
I use a walking frame, so it's a little difficult to navigate through
the mess.
I'm not a great one for mathematics, which is why I'm buying the book.
I would like to undertake a PhD this year, finances willing, so need to
brush up on my maths. I'm particularly interested in the maths for graphics
rendering of 3D models.
Years ago, I bought a Sublogic wire frame graphics package for the 6800.
We used it for various primitive flight simulators on the 6800 and 6809
using a "chunky graphics" memory mapped display and Bressenham line
drawing routines. It was not real fast but at 1 MHz the system was still
fast enough to play a rudimentary 3D graphics game.
I guess the biggest speed up would be in implementing the line drawing
routines in hardware, but implementing a 3D perspective engine in an
FPGA would be pretty neat too. Having a mouse of tracker ball that
allowed you to rotate a wire frame mesh in real time would be pretty cool.
The next step would be to have hardware to warp and texture map surfaces
onto the wire frame. You'd need a Z buffer to prioritize occlusions, so that
you only rendered the front most surfaces.
There was an article in IEEE Computer I think last year on GPUs.
Much of the perspective and warping transformations would apply
to both the video input and video output devices.
John.
rtstofer wrote:
>
> John,
>
> So, how's it going with the book?
>
> I think, perhaps, I skipped too many math courses in favor of hardware
> design. I didn't even do that well with divergence when it was used
> for Maxwell's Equations.
>
> Maybe I would be better served by something at a more introductory
> level like "Robot Vision" by Berthold.
>
> Richard
>
--
http://www.johnkent.com.au
http://members.optushome.com.au/jekent
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to: f...
Reply by ●January 13, 20082008-01-13
Rolf,
Can I have their emails?
Regards,
Sim
----- Original Message ----
From: Rolf Viehmann
To: f...
Cc: s...@yahoo.com; n...@imap.cc
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 5:28:57 PM
Subject: Re: [fpga-cpu] Re: Frame Grabber using FPGA thru webcam
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:14:01 -0800 (PST), ":: aH[sIM] ::"
> said:
>>
>> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would
>> suggest?
>>
>> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at
least
>> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital
format.
>> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
> How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I
know,
> these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast,
low-resolution
> greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
> direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
> interface.
>
> Here's an example datasheet:
> http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
>
> I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
> from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
That's a possible way to go, some fellows at my university are doing
some
experiments with mouse sensors at the moment, and if I got everything
correct, it's not very hard to get a picture out of the camera chip,
but
there are some drawbacks:
- The resolution is not very high, the highest resolution I heard of so
far is 32x32 pixels, the Agilent chip with the datasheet above is only
16x16.
- The bitrate (depth) is not very high, most of the time it is only 6
bit
(64 grayscale levels).
- The samplerate is very high if the DSP does the processing, but the
debug mode of the DSP can only provide a handful of frames/sec (the
debug
mode can be used to dump the picture from the sensor, but only a few
times/sec). But it the sensor chip is read directly (eliminating the
DSP
completely), framerate should be not a problem at all.
If you'd like to ask them some questions, I can ask them for their
email
addresses, and give them to you.
> Neil
Rolf
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to:
f...
Can I have their emails?
Regards,
Sim
----- Original Message ----
From: Rolf Viehmann
To: f...
Cc: s...@yahoo.com; n...@imap.cc
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 5:28:57 PM
Subject: Re: [fpga-cpu] Re: Frame Grabber using FPGA thru webcam
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:14:01 -0800 (PST), ":: aH[sIM] ::"
> said:
>>
>> I've abandon the plan to use USB webcam.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> So, are there any other image sensor company that you guys would
>> suggest?
>>
>> The device has to be able to down sample the its resolution to at
least
>> 50x50 and the output should be in YCbCr or BW/grayscale digital
format.
>> What is your advice on selecting other alternatives?
>
> How about using the element out of an optical mouse? As far as I
know,
> these are all made by Agilent and are effectively a fast,
low-resolution
> greyscale camera with a DSP attached. With some models more or less
> direct access can be had to the image capture data via an I2C bus
> interface.
>
> Here's an example datasheet:
> http://literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5988-4289EN.pdf
>
> I'd suggest the easiest way to procure one would be to simply salvage
> from a working mouse. That way you get a decent lens too.
That's a possible way to go, some fellows at my university are doing
some
experiments with mouse sensors at the moment, and if I got everything
correct, it's not very hard to get a picture out of the camera chip,
but
there are some drawbacks:
- The resolution is not very high, the highest resolution I heard of so
far is 32x32 pixels, the Agilent chip with the datasheet above is only
16x16.
- The bitrate (depth) is not very high, most of the time it is only 6
bit
(64 grayscale levels).
- The samplerate is very high if the DSP does the processing, but the
debug mode of the DSP can only provide a handful of frames/sec (the
debug
mode can be used to dump the picture from the sensor, but only a few
times/sec). But it the sensor chip is read directly (eliminating the
DSP
completely), framerate should be not a problem at all.
If you'd like to ask them some questions, I can ask them for their
addresses, and give them to you.
> Neil
Rolf
To post a message, send it to: f...
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to:
f...
