IR camera

Hi,

I like to use the cobra with the following camera

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8773

Is the Cobra and the NETMF capable of sending this video over WiFi? I think I have read somewhere it couldn’t.

Roel

given this outputs an RCA signal, you need some way to get that “in” to a digital format. So I’d say you should look at other options here, not going to do what you want. A 2.4ghz video-sender would probably be easier.

OK!

Do you have examples of a 2.4 GHz sender?

Roel, you are dutch, right?
If so, this is something that might interest you. I have found it yesterday, and I will order one of those soon.

Click here for the page. THIS PAGE IS DUTCH, IF YOU CANNOT READ DUTCH, DO NOT OPEN :stuck_out_tongue:

Hmmm interesting! But no interface with .NET, I prefer that!

Bedankt!

Roel

I think I have now a solution! Very simple …

(No spam just an answer)

But there is a lot of work to do :smiley:

I don’t know which device class of this cable ,but you have to know a lot of USB stuff to write a driver for this camera

What about a Wiimote . AFAIK there is a built-in IR camera

The intention is the following.

  • connect camera rca to rca2usb
  • connect usb to board
  • connect board to Zigbee
  • connect Zigbee to coordinator
  • connect coordinator to PC
  • PC shows images

I heard that with a baudrate of 115200 this would be possible. Do I need in this scenario still the driver? Or can I convert the signal simple to serial and back again?

Roel

You said you want to connect it to zigbee/xbee. Xbee is serial communication (UART) so I do not quite know what you want to know?

The RCA output from the camera is converted to digital by the cable (RCA2USB). Now I like to transfer the converted digital signal over Serial (Zigbee) to the PC. Is this possible? Or are these two total different things? May be I don’t get it …

Roel

I was thinking:

When I connect the camera as a USB host. Create a memorystream of the input, in this case to digital converted RCA. Of the memorystream I can create a bytearray.

Is it possible to take the signal of USB and convert it to a memorystream with NETMF?

Hmmm or are we talking about drivers then again …

Roel

Zigbee is not the correct choice for video. It is designed to pass small messages using low power and thus has a limited throughput.

Would bluetooth be better or am I stuck with WiFi?

Got still one question remaining:
Is it possible to take the signal of USB and convert it to a memorystream with NETMF?

I think (personally) that anything related to video is not something you can effectively handle on a micro controller. Certainly the data rates are way too high on most serial data streams.

Still images are a different matter, at low enough resolutions.

digital video and embedded are not embedded system friendly and defiantly not something anyone can do beside experts in image processing…not FEZ and not any other chip!

So not possible with NETMF (and noobs) is the conclusion.

well, not the way you are currently thinking of the solution :wink:

here’s the kind of thing I was talking about as a sender.
[url]Gadget Reviews, Tech News & Insightful Buyer's Guides | Mr Gadget

If you just want to get the image “data” from one place to the next, then you can do that with this. Where would a microcontroller play in this space? Well, it might not be needed - certainly isn’t going to be needed for the image transmission. But again, what did you actually want to do - I don’t think you’ve articulated what the overall plan might have been so it’s a bit hard to suggest any other alternatives. (but video data rates and “slow” communication rates like a microcontroller has are not going to be possible)

indeed, for such projects you would need a wireless sender.
Or, you buy one of the site I gave you. It comes with l-ion battery and camera.

Thanks!

I will explain what I want!

I like to drive a robot (unmanned) remote from my laptop. So all it need is to send the data so I can see where I am driving. Commands etc will be given by Zigbee so I think also now there is no room for video by the way.

Is making a webserver on a camera an idea with WiFi, or buy one? I like to use DPWS also for sensors so I can use the Wifi for that also. This should be possible with the Cobra, I think.

I can also change the choice of the camera to a still jpeg images camera and do something like this:

http://bansky.net/blog/2008/03/jpeg-camera-and-micro-framework/comments.html#108

I can take pictures on a certain rate so it looks like a video.

Why not just use a WiFi camera? Then you can still use Cobra for your sensors. DPWS is possible but this is a high end way to connect sensors, which I personally think is an overkill for 99% of embedded applications. You can make your own protocol much simpler and be done in minutes vs hours with DPWS!