How do you interface a camera?

Other Hardware Sensors
1

Hi,
I am, for my next project, looking to use a camera with the Arduino, one that can send the finished picture to it. I was looking at the "Linksprite JPEG Color Camera Serial UART Interface (TTL level)" camera, because it allready has sample code, but are there any other cameras with sample code?

How exactly do you physically connect this camera to the arduino? I will problebly be using the Mini, but dont have it right now.

Thanks for your help.

2

Let's get the question of what the Arduino is going to do with the picture out of the way, first. So, what is it going to do with it?

3

Well, it is going to compare it to an image allready stored on the memory card (would this have to be an SD card shield?) and see if they match. My hope is to make an iris scanning lock.

4

There are a few things you need to consider.

  • Comparing two retinal scans to determine whether they are equal is not a trivial operation and I doubt there's room just for the code - even in an Arduino Mega.
  • The images themselves can't be compared when they are JPG compressed. They have to be decompressed into raster images which means that each one will be close to a megabyte. The Mega only has 256kb so a Mini hasn't got a prayer.
  • Do you know what the close focus ability of the camera is? If it can't focus close enough to take an image of the retina (from a distance of a few centimetres) then you're out of luck.
  • Even if the camera can focus close enough, how are you going to provide enough light that the camera can get a properly exposed image?

Think about it some more.

Pete