Help on camera module which can upload pictures to internet

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This cheap USB camera claims to have 30M pixel. Not sure if its true or not. I have one on order and will check it out. Just use an USB host chip such as PIC24FJ256 and STM32F105 for the interface.

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It's quite obviously VGA w/ 10x zoom... Voila! 0.3M becomes 30M! I hope they didn't charge you much for shipping.

Bob

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Shipping is free. 10x digital zoom would be fine. My guess is that they shift the sensor array slightly per frame, to get higher resolutions. If they can do it reliablely, that would be fine. I have contacted the seller for more info, but it might take weeks because of the Chinese holidays.

Budget? Performance requirements (speed, range, etc)? Production volumes? Environmental requirements? Size? Power? Security? Reliability?

People do this all the time as a hobby, with a USB camera and an old computer. So if you stay close to that model I think you don't need to really flog the software -- this should be more of a systems integration effort than a unique system design effort.

Depending on what you really need, your best bet ranges from a USB camera and a cheap used PC from the want ads to a full-custom solution that puts sensor & computation on one board, in a custom case with custom optics.

Possible computer resources run the gamut of old used PCs that can't do anything but run Xubuntu with some custom apps, mini- or micro-ATX motherboards in suitable cases, PC-104 or variants in suitable cases, to full-custom boards.

I think you'll have to be at a pretty high level of integration and sophistication before it doesn't make sense to buy a pre-packaged USB camera. You'd have to be at a _very_ high level of sophistication, or huge production volumes, before you went away from a PC architecture for the computer.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Any form ?

QVGA, CIF, Monochrome, raw RGB, interlaced, progressive, HD Video res....

Sounds like a wish list without reserach.

Ah the ultimate perfect camera.

With or without extra illumination of white lights or LED or even IR.

For that matter mechanically operated IR filters.

What lens size?

What is likely fastest moving object at minimum illumination?

Cheaper than what?

Ready made for what?

Sounds like the ultimate wishlist for the perfrect camera and system at zero cost or development time.

I don't think you have the basic idea of what you are trying to take pictures of.

Until you sort out what the MEASURED extremes you are trying to acquire you just have GIGO.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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This is a 120MP image sensor from canon, so 30MP should be doable.

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The vast majority of digital zoom on webcams and is done in the HOST not the camera, on compact digital cameras (the cheap and mobile phone ones) it may be done in electronics at best to interpolate between real pixels. It is still only a VGA resolution camera.

I would prefer to see what the line pair resolution is with the optics than some pseudo pixel number.

You did read the User comment on that page, and do understand that all camera sensors are not the same. This is supposedly meant for SLR format

35mm sensor not like the compact digital cameras most people use and will not be a cheap sensor

Looks more like a Press Release on something that may or may not exist now or in the future.

Its night time picture taking is likely to be awful.

Many companies have had high resolution sensors for many years, but they were expensive units and each one had its own interfacing quirks.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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There are some with higher resolutions, but USB is the problem. They will likely require high speed (480M) interface. If I need a high speed uC, might as well go with raw sensors. For example, the micron MT9T001 (2048x1536) costs around $10, but I need enough buffer ram to handle it. Perhaps with 200K bytes (LPC1800 series)

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Yes and no. Depends how many pictures you want to take and how quickly you want to store it.

With higher resolution beyond what is classed as HD (approx 1920 x 1080 progressive/interlace), there are very FEW applications that actually require more than single shot or even 1 frame per second. The major application area for this sensor size is SLR or specialist instrumentation/laboratory equipment. A lot of the cost starts at the lens as soon as you go above 1-2 Megapixel you need more expensive lens to avoid artifacts and LOSS of resolution or low light transfer. Choice of lensing gets restricted as wide angle > 45 degrees gets even more difficult.

Go above 10 Megapixel and lens quality (and cost) increases. Look at the costs for Digital SLR lenses to see what I mean. Many medium to high end SLRs and large format cameras are above 10Megapixel.

Trying to get more than one frame/second above 2 Megapixel, has many problems and they start with cost at sensor and lens requiring higher speed memory (and lots of it). Transferring the images becomes the next bottleneck, let alone guaranteeing the recipient (PC or storage device) can handle and store the data rate. Beyond HD there are few display options other than digital high definition cinema projection systems. This is not just the display resolution, but the data transfers and streams through the whole system, often over distances longer than USB.

All of these things increase the cost and size of the units. How many people want to buy high speed high resolution that certainly would start to be looking at dedicated Gigabit ethernet links and all the other demands puts the camera systems into the $100's more likely $1000's, so limits the market.

Hving dealt with various high resolution sensor from 16k pixel line scanners to multi-megapixel sensors for over 20 years.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
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We just need one picture within a few seconds, 3MP to 5MP would be enough.

We need it for ID type picture, so no wide angle. Lighting can be controlled.

Yes, we need to compress it on the fly to around 100KB.

Consider doing research on Compact digital cameras that are cheap, and have the USB built in, have relatively good lens, ones with UVC support allow you to take picture and download the picture under software control.

Use standard cameras, or compact digital cameras.

Unless you are taking ID pictures of one colour paper sheets, that amount of compression from 3-5 MP will be so lossy that you might as well have started at 1MP resolution.

Get a 3 - 5 MP compact digital camera and take some example photos in similar conditions and see what picture sizes you get. They will not be

100kB, but a lot more. Unless the lighting is low and picture is awful noise, so unrealistically useable. Even at the same lighting conditions you will great variation in sizes depending on subject, just wait for someone with bits of check or plaid clothing in the image.

There are loads of ID solutions already that use VGA and 1MP cameras as that is all they need.

Going down to 100kB seems to be the main driving force for transmission over communications means, and is the tail wagging the dog. I have seen this too often, and if that is the case work backwards to acheivable resolutions.

As a comparison I have systems working with VGA and producing fairly high compression ratios give

0.3MP sensor high compression image 20 to 30kB low compression image 40 to 60kB

The high compression is just about useable but very noisy and banded as in loss of colour depth.

So if you have 3 to 5 MP source you will NOT got 100kB except for a black cat in a coal cellar, or a white cat in a snow storm.

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Yes, that is an option. Preferably one with user programmable controller.

If one is available to meet our need. Otherwise, we need a custom controller reprocessing the image anyway.

We need more resolution at the center oval (the face), the rest can be lower resolution. So, we need some pre-processing prior to compression.

Yes, i did.

We can go upto 200K. It is sufficient with facial mask.

No, we don't care about clothing, just shoulder level.

We are not ruling them out, just considering alternatives.

Or a black/yellow/red/white face in blurry blackground, which is fine for our purpose.

You should look up UVC class support and find out what capabilities any compact cameras you already have can do.

From what you describe it would be easier to do two pictures, but still requires good lens -

a) VGA resolution of field of view (most camera systems and sensors can be set to do this)

b) Determine where face is take VGA WINDOWED capture of that region some call it part of their zooming at scale 1.

That would be quicker to process and smaller compression.

Doing different areas at different resolutions is not a standard feature of sensors/cameras and most standard image file formats. Better to crop the image either at sensor or post processing.

Better to crop out as much as possible, will help help compression size.

conditions

Watch out for collars, scarves, ties, ear-rings, piercings, plasters.... All above the shoulders

Let alone lighting being screwed by badly placed lighting on glasses, contacts, jewellery, some types of makeup, medical dressings, glass eyes..

Lighting colour of non D65 (daylight or 6500K) causes other problems.

......

Be amazed what happens with tanning, hair dyes, wet face from rain. Be very careful with flesh tone detection algorithms, real life and the general population can provide many, many exceptions

Try to avoid blurry background, plainer background or masked to a fixed mid grey will help compression. Blurring can add to compressed data size.

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snipped-for-privacy@gmail.co skrev:

Sound like an application for an Android Phone.

The Android Phone can upload to Internet using:;

• GSM/WCDMA/HSDPA (or any obsucre U.S. standard)

• WLAN (through a nearby router)

A Bluetooth or USB Keyboard can be used to connect a user interface.

BR Ulf Samuelsson

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.co skrev:

Sound like an application for an Android Phone.

The Android Phone can upload to Internet using:;

• GSM/WCDMA/HSDPA (or any obsucre U.S. standard)

• WLAN (through a nearby router)

A Bluetooth or USB Keyboard can be used to connect a user interface.

BR Ulf Samuelsson

??? by moving the sensor? the lens? On a $6 USB web cam?

If they can do it reliablely, that would be fine. I

Lol, Bob