I need some help/advice for how to hack a USB webcam to be arduino compatible for a robot or unmanned aerial vehicle so that I can see on some type of monitor what it's doing when I control it remotely. All help is greatly appreciated.
Sorry you can't do this on an arduino, it is way too slow and there is not enough RAM.
Oh man that stinks. Do you know how I would go about doing something like that? I've seen people with uav planes that have it.
You can't process video by arduino, but in most application it's absolutely not necessary have 30 frame per second (fps) video traffic channel.
With 1-2 fps you can still have pretty good view on your RC display, what your vehicle is up to. Check on JPEG camera:
http://www.linksprite.com/product/showproduct.php?id=59&lang=en
Xbee or Blue-tooth will send picture over the air.
mykiscool:
Oh man that stinks. Do you know how I would go about doing something like that? I've seen people with uav planes that have it.
If you're planning on building a UAV, then you are going to want something that can transmit the video real-time, at the highest frame-rate possible (especially if you intend to control/steer the device via what you see via the video). Unless your UAV is fairly large, this is generally going to mean going with a 2.4 GHz video transmitter and a small camera. Depending on the range you plan to cover, you may even need to figure out a method to use yagi antennas (or similar high-gain and directional antennas) on both ends, with full position tracking (based on the lat/lon cordinates from GPS on the plane, and lat/lon cordinates of the base controlling station). Control information to the UAV would be handled via standard radio-control gear, information back from the UAV, depending on density, could either be interleaved on the v-blank of the video signal, or sent over a separate channel (x-bee, or some other RF means).
A similar type system could be built for a UGV (unmanned ground vehicle), and may be preferable if the vehicle is smaller (and doesn't have the battery power for a larger system). Otherwise, if the UGV is large enough to carry the batteries needed, you could put a 802.11 g/n router on the robot, and communicate with the Arduino via an ethernet shield or similar, or connect the router to an on-board PC motherboard, and communicate with the Arduino via USB. In addition, your camera options expand greatly - HD firewire cameras, or USB cams - even network IP cams - all are possibilities. You could have such a system on a UAV, too - but such a machine might have to be fairly large to carry the gear (an option there though might be something like the BeagleBoard, or some other small embedded Linux PC).
Check out DIYDrones! (http://www.diydrones.com) It's a big community of folks who make all sorts of autonomous aerial vehicles. There is a huge amount of info about real time transmission of video in their forums.
PLUS they are huge Arduino fans! They've designed and sell their own Arduino boards, specially designed for optimum use in remote controlled and autonomous aircraft.
here:
you can record data in the data stream, just pass it over UART, its not live unless you transmit it.... its light wight (<0.75 oz) and smaller then a business card
http://visionmos.com/Products/mdvr2.htm