You can now purchase on pre-order the PortentaVisionShield (Ethernet capable one delivery for most people late Oct ? ? ?) . It looks very impressive and if you install the OpenMV IDE it looks possible to do all kinds of fancy microPython based Machine Learning, photo and video saving abilities right out of the box.
I am a bit concerned about dealing with a new IDE, new company (Potentially amazing support) and lack of C or C++ Arduino support. Perhaps that is coming later, I do not know, and know one is answering those questions.
Another big attention grabber is that it only does GRAYSCALE. If you watch the video all the RGB graphs are almost the same. It converts GRAYSCALE into a fake RGB so that it can run machine learning models that were made for RGB. All pictures and video taken with this camera will be saved in GRAYSCALE (1, 4 or 8 bit records the level of grayness, meaning max 1 byte instead of RGB565 = 2 bytes per pixel).
I have mixed feelings about this, since it is actually fairly brilliant. It makes the images MUCH smaller which is very good for frame-rates and the Arduino ability to process the machine learning model, it just might be a huge "Gotcha" for people purchasing the camera, especially since most of the examples in the IDE and on the OpenMV site use RGB565 (2 byte color: 5 bits Red, 6 bits Green, 5 bits Blue), and the other OpenMV cameras are all RGB565.
I have signed up for the OpenMV Forum that has a Portenta section. This is all very new and reminds me of what things were like when the Portenta first came out.
The Open MV blog entry on the Arduino Interface Library provides a link to their GitHub OpenMV Arduino RPC Interface Library ... looks like it will be an interesting weekend.
Good luck to the team working on bringing the Arduino Tutorial Site back up
Surfnm, looks like the tutorials are up working again. Can you post anything you find out about the RPC interface, I am curious how it works. Good luck with your shield.
Any updates from people using the Portenta Vision Shield. I just got one in the mail and it works fine. Wondering if anyone has tried it with Edge Impulse yet as Edge Impulse can use the other OpenMV cams https://docs.edgeimpulse.com/docs/openmv-cam-h7-plus and I do know for Machine Learning Python has a few advantages over C and C++ for ease of use.
The Himax camera has a barcode on it - when scanned yields the number: 608-1C900260.
Is the datasheet for this available? I'd like to know if 8-bit color is possible with this camera.
Himax has color and monochrome only models for this camera, and I think a third party mounts the
camera on the flex that's connected to the main Vision Shield board - would be great to get that datasheet.
