I'm trying to make a layman's Google glass using the Myvu crystal 701-- if you aren't familiar with the product, it's basically a much bulkier and watered-down version of Google glass that connects to different products like iPhones and iPods. Anyway, the pendant that connects the device to the LCD displays is broken, but I'm pretty sure the screens still work. But anyway, here are my main problems:
Is there a way I can get input from a webcam to an arduino board that subsequently displays the input from the webcam onto the LCD screens? And if so, which board should I use, and what shields would be necessary (if any)? Or would it be easier to route the entire thing through a Raspberry Pi?
The only issue I have with using a Raspberry Pi is that I don't want to waste all that processing power to do something as simple as receiving video input from a webcam and translating it to an LCD screen. And by the way, the reason I'm using a webcam is because my iPhone 5 doesn't support video output, so I'm just gonna develop a case that constantly streams an image of my screen to the webcam, or that's the plan anyway. Any suggestions about anything having to do my project would be really helpful. Thanks! XD
I'd also really appreciate any webcam suggestions. I need one that's small, cheap, and good for interfacing with whatever board is a good choice for my project
You won't be able to do that using an Arduino microcontroller. You need far more memory and processing speed than a microcontroller can provide. You might be able to do it using one of the recent hybrid Arduinos which have a small PC embedded but a compact computer such as RPi or BeagleBone Black would seem like a more sensible approach. Even so, you will probably end up needing to create your own video adapters to connect between the input and output devices. This strikes me as an extremely advanced project.
You might be able to do it using one of the recent hybrid Arduinos which have a small PC embedded but a compact computer such as RPi or BeagleBone Black would seem like a more sensible approach. Even so, you will probably end up needing to create your own video adapters to connect between the input and output devices. This strikes me as an extremely advanced project.
Yeah, I'm kinda bummed the project is turning out to be so complicated. The pendant was all I needed to make it work, and it came broken :0. But anyway, the only thing I'm worried about is connecting the video output to the screens. Do you know if connecting those kinds of screens to the RPi using any adapters is even possible?
Video is not simple. It has fairly high bandwidth requirements that are just beyond what a 16Mhz Arduino with limited memory can handle.
Rather than getting a web cam, get a camera that outputs composite video directly, such as the cameras made for car backup systems. You should be able to hook this camera straight to the Myvu, which appears to have a connector for the yellow RCA plug for composite video. Here is the first such camera I found on ebay: 170ยบ CMOS Car Rear View Reverse Backup Parking Camera Waterproof Wide Angle for sale online | eBay
If you have an Uno, you might be able to use the Video Experimenter's shield to overlay some basic text information over the video stream. It won't work with Leonardo or Mega processors. I bought one a few years ago, and never used it. As I recall, the source available was made for pre-1.0 Arduino libraries, and you needed to make some minor mods to get it to compile: Video Experimenter: Arduino shield that lets you do all kinds of experiments with video
Hehe.. Maybe an Intel Edison would be your ticket.
Side note: I find it amusing how Intel is always trying to poke their heads into embedded space with x86. Somehow I don't see them overthrowing the ARM as the hackers' darling for small form factor computing.
SirNickity:
Hehe.. Maybe an Intel Edison would be your ticket.
IIRC, the Galileo board that has the Edison chip and runs the Arduino libraries has some fairly high power requirements that would make it undesirable for mobile apps that need to run off of batteries. Lets see you will need a 5 volt battery (easily doable) that can put out 3 amps of power (much harder to find).
They also have some new board that's around the size of an SD card. I would assume it takes less power, but TBH I don't know for sure. Nor what its capabilities are. Just throwing an idea out there in hopes it might be relevant.