Is FEZ DOMINO powerful enough to handle raw video (VGA) data?

NETMF & Gadgeteer
1

Hi guys,

I am new to FEZ, and I have a few questions for my project to Encode/Compress video (from a basic camera usually found in USB cams), on the spot before sending it to the PC.

Is FEZ domino powerful enough to run a compress (probably H264/X264 codec) and then store/transmit data, on the go?
Also can anyone please provide me an example of how to connect the camera’s data pins to FEZ?
Also any pointers on which camera i can choose?

Thanks,
Rahul

2

For video decoding, you will need USBizi’s bigger cousin, ChipworkX. (FEZ is running USBizi)
See this video - YouTube

Also, we do not support USB cameras yet, since we haven’t received enough interest in this area but you can connect a network camera
See the end of this video - YouTube

3

I am OK with no USB support for camera. I am trying to connect a basic camera (raw image data) directly to the digital data inputs on FEZ, and then write up a program to control the cam using I2C interface, and process this raw data and encode/compress/resize it whichever way I would need.

Once it is heavily compressed, I would be able to do anything with it. Store, transmit wireless & stream live, etc.

Is this possible on a FEZ Domino? Will it have enough power/speed to cope up with this requirement?

4

Like I said before, you need its larger cousins to do the job. You need megabytes of RAM to do anything with video so you will need EMX or ChipworkX

5

oooh, pick me !

I would like USB camera support, as I mentioned some months ago in a post :slight_smile:

:wink: :wink:

edit: Just to clarify, i ONLY want frame grabs for stills, no video ! And I’m happy with buffering to SD card :slight_smile:

6

Yes that is the plan, somewhat! If we support USB webcams on FEZ, it will be as a frame grabber and not video. Video only make sense if you have MBs of RAM, like on EMX or chipworkX. See GHI website and search youtube videos.

7

Either USB or Serial frame grabber would be great.

I tried a couple serial jpg cameras a while back but they had some flakey issues. One camera (on Sparkfun) would crap out after taking several shots. Even the test software that I downloaded from the manufacturer was flakey. Another cmaera that I got from CuteDigi I could not get the baud rate to set correctly it wanted to stay at 38400 which is way too slow.

A decent camera or frame grabber would be refreshing especially if the drivers are available.

8

We do not usually talk about this because we do not want beginners trying it but we do provide a raw USB class that lets you do about anything, including writing drivers for USB cameras.
It is there but since this is very advanced, no support is provided for this feature