Image processing using microcontroller

Am 16.01.2010 15:05, schrieb anex:

Cortex M3 microcontrollers seem to be a better choice to me. The cost of the microcontroller is nearly the same, but you get much more processor speed (72 MHz vs 16 MHz), larger bus width (32 vs 8 bits) and a larger linear address space (4gb vs 64k) for ram.

I'd suggest using a chip with an external memory interface so you can easily add external ram if you need. The downside is that those chips are only available in larger TFQP packages that may be difficult to solder by hand (it is doable). Use pre-manufactured adapter boards then.

I like the STM32 family of chips. ST Micro provides C libraries for all peripheral functions like i2c or timers or dma. The STM32F103ZE has 72 MHz Clock, 144 pins, a complete external bus interface, so you can easily add more ram, 512k flash and 64k internal ram. It's avaliable for

Why Cortex M3 and not ARM7? Because the ARM7 always needs a bit of asm startup code. The Cortex M3 can be programmed completely in C and is a bit easier to handle, and it has much better interrupt interrupt facilities.

There are many other manufacurers of Cortex M3 microcontrollers: Atmel, NXP, Luminary Micro/TI,... Just have a look.

To do what?

What you are trying to achieve from the system, will determine if the fit is right.

Why?

The application requirements determine what you will need, from lenses to final output data (even if that is just turn a light on).

Depends what you need to store.

First you will have to understand HOW they work.

You are putting the cart before the horse and picking your components before working out what you need to do.

Until you have worked out what you want to do, and the algorithms for processing, you do not know what your memory or processing requirements are.

Then you know what your timing and processing requirements are.

Then you can define camera, memory, processor and what the output will be (electrical, format or other).

Which seems to be the source of many I want to use a camera, but have not done any basic research posts.

Be amazed how many want to put it through a very SMALL PIC.

Seen a lot of them and if they looked at past posts first on embedded.com they would have seen many times the similar thing said in a lot less harsh terms.

anex skrev:

The AT91SAM9XE has a built in CMOS sensor interface and can interface directly to low cost SDRAM. Running at 200 MHz with built in cache, it should run in circles around the Cortex parts. Can be had in a TQFP package.

If you want to go the lower cost approach, the SAM3S also have sort of a sensor interface. If can do DMA from parallel I/O

An AVR32 will have higher processing power than the Cortex-M3, due to its DSP featured instruction set.

The ATXMEGA64A1 has DMA and Event system, as well as an external bus, so you can add large external memory to this AVR.

BR Ulf Samuelsson