FEZ Spider (Processing Power)

Hello,
I currently own a FEZ Spider kit and I have a general question about its processing power.

In fact, I would like to build a video recorder with the following modules:
FEZ Spider Mainboard, Camera Module (or usb cam), SD card module and power module.

Do you think it is possible to have at least the following performance with the above configuration:
*Recording of 5-10 frames per second.
*Resolution of 320x240 (or less if needed)
*Compression to JPEG or PNG or MPEG ?
*Possibly I would like to add some text overlay on the image (ex: timestamp)
*Saving to SD card. (in the compressed format)

Do you think the FEZ Spider is an appropriate device to perform this task ?
If not, do you know another kit which could be able to do it ? (Ex: FEZ Hydra or ChipworkX or something else?)

Thanks for the answer.

Encoding JPEG/MPEG is VERY processing intensive task. You will not be able to do it. A 3Ghz 64bit PC will run slow when encoding MPEG :slight_smile:

What you can do is record 2 to 10 BMP images per second on SD card. Adding text to images is very easy and take little processing.

Compressing images can be done but it is not easy task and will be slow, seconds per image.

I have a few more questions…

Would it be feasible to use raw binary compression (RLE?) or compressed PNG and achieve approx 5 frames with a resolution of 160x120 ?

Also, can I use a SDHC card or SDXC card with the SD card module ?

Thanks again for your time.

Yes I think you can but you need to implement the encoder using RLP (C code not C#)

SDHC is supported

Joe,
How about using a JPEG camera like one of these:

http://www.robotshop.com/productinfo.aspx?pc=RB-Fds-15&lang=en-US

http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=75

The adafruit camera also has NTSC full motion output, and does motion detection.
I don’t know how well it works, but it’s worth looking into.

The only problem with these is you can’t add text overlay.

Ahhh! Good point.