Hello,
I have a project in which I want to use the Arduino MEGA 2560 to save images to an SD using a TTL camera (i.e. Linksprite 2MP camera). What I want to do is have a servo motor attached to the camera, move to a position and take a picture at that location, then move on.
From the forums and research, I understand that the Arduinos are not made for image processing and I do not want to do that. What I would like find out is if the Arduino is capable of saving pictures to and SD card quickly. Ideally I would like the picture to be saved under half a second. If it is not possible, is there additional hardware that can improve the saving speed? Or are these requirements simply not possible for the Arduino board?
In fact, if you are considering this camera, it only sends data at 115200 rate, so 11,520bytes per second. Unless you are taking 640*480 pictures, the picture size (I assume it outputs jpeg files) will be quite a bit larger than 11KB and will take a minute to send to any system.
Thank you for the replies.
Yes, I have considered the Rasperry Pi, I just thought about the Arduino as it is more familiar to me.
It seems pretty convincing that any image going through the arduino will not end too well for my purposes. In this case, is there a camera that has an on board SD card which I can use the arduino to trigger the picture taking? If so, can you point me towards a camera with such capabilities?
If this is not feasible, then I will certainly have to start learning a new controller such as the Raspberry.
Pretty much every consumer camera has an SD card. Some DSLRs use Compact Flash so if it absolutely needs to be SD, watch for it.
Every DSLR has the shutter release port for wired control and some modern ones also have IR receivers for remote control.
Some point and shoot cameras also have these capabilities.
In any case, use the camera to handle the pictures and Arduino to handle the servo. Separate the tasks.