Can someone suggest a reasonably-priced monochrome camera module (I can live with color but don't need it), VGA-resolution camera module with some kind of buffer and low-speed interface; SPI, I2C, RS232, etc. SPI would be my preference.
I need two of them, and perhaps two spares, to build a demo platform for a student to work with very simple stereoscopic machine vision. Currently he is working with a PC and two USB webcams but he wants a smaller system to go in a vehicle without requiring huge batteries, plus he doesn't want the overhead of a USB stack. We've put together a general block diagram for his circuit and have good candidates for most of the components, but the cameras are a sticky point.
I really want uncompressed or lossless data (preferably de-Bayerized if color) - we don't really want to deal with JPEG artifacts. 0.5-1fps is fine.
All the cellphone camera modules I've looked at appear to be bare image sensors requiring a real-time DMA port to acquire the data. The Ovis-based hobbyist solutions like the C328R from are pretty much what I want, except for the unavoidable JPEG compression.
A $50 price point @ qty 5 is fairly sweet - obviously cheaper would be better.
Thoughts?
Gracias.