Robot Camera  With  2.8" TFT

Well, soon i will upload a piece of video demo in Youtube. It will tell that it is true.
Make impossibility possible. That's the art of technology. :wink:

I'm wondering how you are going to make any headway into a VGA camera's image which is about 1MB native and about 20-30k as a jpeg with an 8 bit processor with 2kB of ram. The arduino will probably take 10 minutes to establish if a frame has any blue in it......

It's pretty obvious that many people here have a very limited perception of how seriously low powered an Atmega microcontroller actually is.

Hint : your computer has a million times more memory and storage than a Duemilanove. (literally)

Here you can see the video demo: MVI_0827.AVI - YouTube :slight_smile:

Here you can see the video demo: MVI_0827.AVI - YouTube

I never had any doubts that it could display the camera picture on the screen, but how exactly does this involve an Arduino ?

I never had any doubts that it could display the camera picture on the screen, but how exactly does this involve an Arduino ?

Well I was querying the fact that it would do all that while being controlled by an ATMega32 (yes 32).

I do however doubt how fast this camera, screen module thingy will be.

I think that is pretty impressive.

The arduino would just control the taking of a picture and whatever else you want it to do as far as I understand it. The onboard ATMega32 controls the camera and screen (and storing of pictures etc)

Could the camera be connected to an arduino, data sent via XBee and then the data sent to the screen for the screen to display it/take pictures etc?
Any news on availability or pricing yet?

I would be interested to know more about the display as it is obviously cheap and relatively simple to interface with. Is there any more information available about the screen itself and how it is interfaced with?

Can I get any info on the display?

Mowcius

I never had any doubts that it could display the camera picture on the screen, but how exactly does this involve an Arduino ?

Well, you can see there are still many vacant pins on the control board. You can expand the function to work with Arduino. :slight_smile:

Quote:
I never had any doubts that it could display the camera picture on the screen, but how exactly does this involve an Arduino ?
Well I was querying the fact that it would do all that while being controlled by an ATMega32 (yes 32).
Quote:
I do however doubt how fast this camera, screen module thingy will be.
I think that is pretty impressive.

The arduino would just control the taking of a picture and whatever else you want it to do as far as I understand it. The onboard ATMega32 controls the camera and screen (and storing of pictures etc)

Could the camera be connected to an arduino, data sent via XBee and then the data sent to the screen for the screen to display it/take pictures etc?
Any news on availability or pricing yet?

Quote:
I would be interested to know more about the display as it is obviously cheap and relatively simple to interface with. Is there any more information available about the screen itself and how it is interfaced with?
Can I get any info on the display?

Mowcius

Yes, you are right. You can use Arduino to take pictures. However, you can also use the ATMega32 to take pictures.

Could the camera be connected to an arduino, data sent via XBee and then the data sent to the screen for the screen to display it/take pictures etc?

Yes, camera can be directly connected to Arduino. And then data is send to the display wirelessly and display it.

Any news on availability or pricing yet?

now we are still testing it. Once testing is finished, price information will be updated here :slight_smile:
And the display can also be directly drived by Arduino. :slight_smile:

Yes, camera can be directly connected to Arduino. And then data is send to the display wirelessly and display it.

Cool, seems like these things just turn up at the right time.

Regarding pricing, I am hoping it will be about $50-60 but I will have to wait and see I suppose.

Can I get any info on the display?

It's all that I want for my project!

I just have to wait more info.

Can I get any info on the display?

Would you please tell me more about what you want to learn?

Would you please tell me more about what you want to learn?

How is the display is controlled on the board (with the arduino)?
Also is there a datasheet on the display somewhere (just the display).

Thanks,
Mowcius

How is the display is controlled on the board (with the arduino)?
Also is there a datasheet on the display somewhere (just the display).

Thanks,
Mowcius

Dear Mowcius
You can use Arduino to control the camera to take photo[ch12289]to export and import the picture from SD and TF card[ch12289]to read and display pictures from the SD and TF card. You can also use Arduino to control the camera to be your robot's eyes..... :wink: and you can extend other function of this camera. :slight_smile:
This camera can also be compatible with some equipment.
We will release new version soon ,which is more powerful than this version......
More information will update continuously...............

Regards

You can use Arduino to control the camera to take photo[ch12289]to export and import the picture from SD and TF card[ch12289]to read and display pictures from the SD and TF card. You can also use Arduino to control the camera to be your robot's eyes..... and you can extend other function of this camera.

Yes, I was aware of this. How does the arduino control the display? What is the code like?
Is there a datasheet for the display itself?

Maybe I should just wait for the update :stuck_out_tongue:

Mowcius

You can also use Arduino to control the camera to be your robot's eyes..... Wink

When you get the arduino to act on what the camera is seeing, wake me up.

Wink is right.......

How long would a regular arduino (with a atmega328) take to download a default resolution picture from the camera?
It sounds nearly too good to be true.

I have to say I'm curious in the same way as mowcius, you've allready told us what we can make the atmega/camera combination do, but in what manner does the atmega interface with the actual camera? for instance: are you directly controlling the electrical circuit of the camera with the atmega? serial line?
We want to know what makes it 'tick', so to speak :stuck_out_tongue:
We love those gruesome details on its inner workings!

How long would a regular arduino (with a atmega328) take to download a default resolution picture from the camera?
It sounds nearly too good to be true.

Well actually it's the onboard ATMega32 which can do that. He states that you can save images to an SD card via an SPI interface.
I presume the camera is 640x480 max so I would have thought a second or two would be possible on an ATMega32. Not too slow to be a problem for me. I want to set it up to send video over a wireless link and automatically take a picture every 2 minutes (or maybe every 5). That should then be able to store a load on a 2GB microSD and I will have a complete log of what my robot has been doing. If it can do phsical recognition then I would be interested in some stuf involving green lasers :stuck_out_tongue:

Despite the lack of info and the possibility of it being a bit slow, it still sounds good.

in what manner does the atmega interface with the actual camera?

As I understand it, the arduino can be set up to just send commands to take an image etc (presumably over serial), or you could use the 40-pin header to have much more control over the display (presumably the display driver circuit) and camera.

We love those gruesome details on its inner workings!

I will make a few enquiries on the other board that seems to use this LCD to try and find out what it use/what the display actually is...

Mowcius

How long would a regular arduino (with a atmega328) take to download a default resolution picture from the camera?

If the arduino is instructing the camera to download to the storage on the interface board, not long, if its downloading to itself, it wouldn't.

It sounds nearly too good to be true.

I'll be kind and say its marketing hype.

I'll be kind and say its marketing hype.

It certainly is marketing, but I would not label it as hype.

The gut that makes this tick is a dual interface display controller.

On one side it can interface to a microcontroller (choice of SPI, 8-bit or 16-bit). The controller supports 18-bit RGB (262k colors) with the QVGA resolution of 320x240. For every pixel on the screen there is 18-bits of RAM to control its color. This RAM makes up the display controller frame buffer.

The other side can interface to a live video feed (camera). This is the traditional horizontal/vertical sync video that is taken from the camera and redirected to the LCD panel by the display controller. Because of its dual interface it also has the option to overlay the video on whatever is in the framebuffer and even rescale the overlay.

When you "take a picture" you simply freeze the current video feed and capture the image in the display controller frame buffer. Once it's there you can stream it (via SPI or 8/16 bit interface) to an SD card. Even a full resolution (320x240) image can be read from the controller in less than a second (e.g. SPI at 8MHz) by the onboard AtMega. Writing to an SD card (in 512 byte chunks) will however add to the time.

Really there is no magic about this if you understand how it works and even image analysis (object detection etc.) would be possible on an AtMega with appropriate software.

As for marketing - the AtMega32 is not on the list of supported Arduino AVR's - nor is the board itself. As such I think labeling it as Arduino compatible is a stretch. Also when you add software for LCD support, a couple fonts, touch controller software and an SD card library there is not much left on an AtMega for other tasks.

As for what Mowicus wants I still think this is within reach.

As for what Mowcius wants I still think this is within reach.

We will release new version soon ,which is more powerful than this version......

Well maybe the reason it is not currently on a 328 is that they might have been caught up in that chip shortage we had not so long ago. Hopefully the new version will be a 328.

and even image analysis

Well unfortunately I'm not that good on stuff like that so I will wait for some more inclined people to make that work :stuck_out_tongue:

Mowcius

Interesting way to handle the pictures.
I suppose a horrible oversight on my part aswell, obviously you don't need an entire image to start processing it.. small chunks will do fine aswell...
Again, interesting :slight_smile:

Cool. I've been thinking about this a long time. I'll definitely buy it once it's released.