AVR-Chat

Thanks everyone for the great ideas, I will look into them, It looks
like at this stage ill buy some cheap cameras and take them apart to
try and see what type of CMOS image sensor they use and whether I can
interface to this sensor directly. The line-scan cameras we use @ work
are nice, but this project is for hobby-robotics, so I would like to
try and build the "eye" from standard off-the-shelf type sensors. a
CMOS image sensor will be great if I can interface to it manually. 

Will keep everybody up to speed on how it goes.

Thanks again
Regards
Hein B
Auckland, New Zealand.


--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, Ken Holt <kholt@...> wrote:

> You may already know that almost all CMOS sensor chips and
> modules provide a digital output only, through a variety of serial
> I/Fs.
> Ken
> 
> kernels_nz wrote:
> 
> > Hi guys, I have a curly one, any creative suggestions would be
> > appreciated.
> >
> > Im interested in digitzing a B/W video waveform from a standard CMOS
> > security camera, im only really interested in one line of video but
> > the conversion time of the average AVR A2D is around 13-50us but the
> > whole video frame is around 50us.
> >
> > I know I can overclock the AVR A2D to around 1MHz, but that still
> > would only give 4 conversions per video frame.
> >
> > So, a few ways that I could see around the problem is:
> >
> > 1. Faster external ADC -> Not ideal because it adds cost, componets
> > and it's hard to get hold of Megasample ADCs. Also, having a fast
> > external ADC is useless unless you can communicate with it at
super speed.
> >
> > 2. Slow down "time" somehow so that I buffer a frame of video
> > "somehow" and convert it at my leasure using the inbuilt ADC. <- This
> > method requires "magic" and im not sure what type ? maybe someone has
> > come across some way of doing this ?
> >
> > 3. Use some of the "line" cameras that allow me to clock the video
> > data out pixel by pixel. <- I can do this, and we even have the
> > cameras available @ work, but I would prefer to use a off-the-shelf
> > cheap video camera.
> >
> > Any other ideas?
> >
> > Thanks !
> >
> > Hein B
> > Auckland, New Zealand.
> >
> >
>