Hi,I'm a firmware guy pulled into a project well out of my area ofexpertise. My boss wants to build (essentially) a digital camerausing an image sensor chip (1600x1200) and output it's data"as fast as possible" using USB2.0. His initial concept, beingthat I'm a firmware guy, was to use a "really fast micro."Normally the company is involved with small 8-bitter microprojects, so you can see I'm well out of my normal bounds.Now this seems like a pretty big stretch to me... and I don't seehow it can be done without the speed of hardware (the imagechips all seem to have clock speeds in the tens of MHz and theUSB2 transfer rate is 480Mbps (theor.). Do aspects of thisproject require an FPGA to keep the data "as fast as possible?"If we use and FPGA for camera-to-RAM and then use a micro for the USB2 part, what kind of fast micros canmove data at that rate?Also, this is something that I am sure we will have to contractout, so if you have any past experience with this, please letme know your thoughts (and if you are available).Thanks!

I don't think the micro should be in the data path. A micro can be usedfor control and management, but the data path should be pure hardwarefor maximum throughput. If you look around, you will find that thereare USB chips with integrated micros (many are 8051s). But the USB 2.0chips typically have a DMA engine for the data path. We have some background in this area. If you are interested, pleasecontact me at the email address below or at sales (at) -- Rick "rickman" CollinsIgnore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XYremoved.Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions CompanySpecializing in DSP and FPGA design URL King Ave 301-682-7772 VoiceFrederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

CMOS camera w/ USB2 -- crazy?

Sep 07, 2003 22 Replies

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Andrew Paule 22 years ago

Should be good - burst rate is listed at 480, but fast wide SCSI had burst rates like this - what is the sustained transfer rate - still not really documented.

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is a good chip for doing this, I think.

Tell me how it turns out

Andrew

Neil Frankl>Andrew Paule writes:

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james 22 years ago

Andrew

No problem.

james

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Manfred Kraus 22 years ago

"GB" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:fNH6b.2542$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...

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You might consider using a FPGA-board (Xilinx Spartan-II) with integrated USB-2 interface (Cypress). You can find a list of boards on

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The USB-2 FPGA board I made (USB2FPGA), comes with schematics. You can use it to build your own hardware if you like. If you dont want to buy it, you can load the schematics from

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Here you find information about the board itsself:

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-> If you need help connecting your CCD to the board please contact me.

-Manfred, CESYS GmbH mkraus-at-cesys-dot-com

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