Is it possible to print out a snapshot from a webcam in realtime with arduino?

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Hello to everyone on the forum,
I used arduino sometimes for small projects, but I'm newbie on this forum.
I searched in the forum something similar of what I'd like to do but seems that there isn't...

I'd like to create a system based on a webcam (or others video input that you would suggest me) , a beamer and a printer (laser/inkjet, I don't know what is the printing system that fits my needs). The idea is to have the camera that is used as camera and as motion detector, when an object pass through the field of view of the camera, it takes a snapshot that is projected on the wall and printed from the printer. I think that projection it will be quite simple to do, the difficult part will be print out the snapshot...
I'd like to create a stand-alone system but if use a computer is fundamental it's not a problem.

I really have no idea how create this, maybe arduino is the wrong tool…
Any suggestion will be really appreciated, someone can help me?
Thanks to everyone who can give a little help!

Simone

2

Hi Simone,

An Arduino has not enough power to do this, A raspberry PI should be able to do what you want,

You might look at the PYTHON language and PIL (Python Image Library).
Many years ago I did a project that detected changes in a webcam image. if > 5% of the pixels changed it fired an event.
I'll check if I have some code on my disk (but I doubt)

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google is faster :slight_smile:

this should get you started

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Hi Rob,
thanks a lot for your answer! What you suggest me it's perfect for my purposes.
I didn't know something about raspberry PI and python language but they seems very useful and perfect for what I'm trying to do.
Thank you also for the “changing-pixels” tip you gave me, it's simple but very effective.
Now the next step it is to make the project real :slight_smile:

5

Hi SImone,

Success with your project and let us know how it continues!

I do not know (have experience with) Raspberry specific fora but for the python questions google is often a great help.