Hi all, I am trying to get a little robot car to do on-board image processing.
So far my plans are as follows:
- microcontroller (ardiuno uno) to sync up the camera, SRAM memory and DSP chip(s)
- DSP chips will perform image processing algorithms and return result(s) to microcontroller
- camera is a very small CMOS type (6mm x 6mm x 4.5mm)
Thoughts:
- feed the 8 bit data stream from the camera into a 1Mx8 bits (8Mbit total memory)
- storage of 640x480 images (so I need 921600 locations of 8 bit storage)
- address line will be controlled by the microcontroller
DSP Chips:
- I have never worked with these before, is it similar to FPGA development?
- I still have to look into my DSP chip needs (multipliers, clock speed and on-chip memory are the most important?)
I have never done this before, does this sound like a reasonable effort that will not be too hard to debug or verify?
Thanks
On-board image processing - robot car
Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
- brucef
- Posts: 215
- Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 4:51 pm
Re: On-board image processing - robot car
That sounds like it might be a pretty challenging project. I'd almost suggest considering a wifi link to a PC to offload the video work and make the car remote controlled from there, but much depends on your budget, goals, etc. Or maybe a Raspberry Pi / webcam setup instead of the Uno / RAM / DSP approach?
At a minimum, I'd think an Uno would be a bit underpowered gluing all that other hardware together, and adding your own video-capable DSP would be hard.
At a minimum, I'd think an Uno would be a bit underpowered gluing all that other hardware together, and adding your own video-capable DSP would be hard.
-
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2012 9:01 pm
Re: On-board image processing - robot car
Alright so I talked to a professor, it was rushed, he said to look into a DSP development board with full API for openCV. Don't know if such a thing exists or is easy to use.
Another person I consulted said to go with an ARM development board to make interfacing the camera and what not easier.
Do you know some guidelines on how to select a suitable hardware application? I have almost no idea on how to determine if the processor and it's board organization can suit my processing needs. Most of the stuff I have experience with is low-level FPGA design and, well when you design all the logic elements, clock cycle and processing time is a hop skip and a jump away.
Another person I consulted said to go with an ARM development board to make interfacing the camera and what not easier.
Do you know some guidelines on how to select a suitable hardware application? I have almost no idea on how to determine if the processor and it's board organization can suit my processing needs. Most of the stuff I have experience with is low-level FPGA design and, well when you design all the logic elements, clock cycle and processing time is a hop skip and a jump away.
- brucef
- Posts: 215
- Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 4:51 pm
Re: On-board image processing - robot car
I've never done CV work outside of an x86 environment, but Google seems to suggest that there's OpenCV support available for the BeagleBoard. That sounds like a promising start to me, maybe ask around for advice on their forums?
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.