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Homebrewed hardware setup for machine vision research?

Hi all -

I am interested in a hardware setup that satisfy the following requirements:

1) 2 cameras will capture color images at a very high frame rate 2) These images will be saved onto distinct framebuffers (preferrably at the capture rate) 3) The framebuffers should be accessible to a PC workstation (through one of its comm buses - or perhaps the framebuffers exist in the system memory already? The PC must have enough resources to run other applications on it besides capturing the images.)

I have a couple of ideas floating in my head, but I want to poll you guys for any good ideas on how to go about designing/implementing this system - or something similar (read: cheaper, faster and/or less work). I'm partial to a more modular design; say.. a seperate FB module w/ dual-port memory? - but I fear these may slow the effective capture rate.

Thanks, Prasad

Reply to
Packet Loss
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10fps, 100000fps?

If you're talking video, then it's a boring solved problem. Go down to your local PC shop, and purchase two 'TV' cards. Linux makes it very easy to deal with the video stream. I did a trivial little "average over 100 frames" thingy in about 100 lines of C.

Reply to
Ian Stirling

Depends very much on what you are palnning to do.

OK, so a cheap b/w camera on a standard capture crad will run you $20 for the camera and $80 for a decent board (Haupauge, for example). You can then access the images using VideoForWindows or DirectVideo (or whatever its called). Similar for Linux.

Get a second card (they should get along), and color cameras. Now you are at

2x$80 + 2x$100 for cameras.

That leaves two things unsolved though: the cameras are not in sync - you need genlocking cameras for that - much more expensive.

And you wanted high speed (I assume you are refering to the frame rate?) cameras, so you just multiplied your cost by 5 or 10 once more.

Alternatives are using two firwire camcorders, but they are not in sync either (unless you got for the $3k and higher models), or Web Cams, but both of them compress the video signal and you not only lose important quality and color resolution, you also have to decode the stereo image stream again.

So, if you want to be cheap, get two of those surveilance cameras mounted on an accesable PCB with composite out and run them through the same Quarz Cristal and Reset circuit to keep them in sync. Get two non-compressing video boards and you'll be in business for under $400.

Or, get high spped cameras that usually come with a PC adapter and are syncable by nature, but don't expect to pay under, wild guess, $5k for the pair.

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(for example, no idea what the pricing is)

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Reply to
Matthias Melcher

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