Homebrewed hardware setup for machine vision research?

[Packet Loss]

Hi all -

I am interested in a hardware setup that satisfy the following requirements:

1) 2 cameras will capture color images at a very high frame rate
2) These images will be saved onto distinct framebuffers (preferrably at the
capture rate)
3) The framebuffers should be accessible to a PC workstation (through one of
its comm buses - or perhaps the framebuffers exist in the system memory
already? The PC must have enough resources to run other applications on it
besides capturing the images.)

I have a couple of ideas floating in my head, but I want to poll you guys
for any good ideas on how to go about designing/implementing this system -
or something similar (read: cheaper, faster and/or less work). I'm partial
to a more modular design; say.. a seperate FB module w/ dual-port memory? -
but I fear these may slow the effective capture rate.

Thanks,
Prasad

 

[Matthias Melcher]

Depends very much on what you are palnning to do.

OK, so a cheap b/w camera on a standard capture crad will run you $20 for
the camera and $80 for a decent board (Haupauge, for example). You can then
access the images using VideoForWindows or DirectVideo (or whatever its
called). Similar for Linux.

Get a second card (they should get along), and color cameras. Now you are at
2x$80 + 2x$100 for cameras.

That leaves two things unsolved though: the cameras are not in sync - you
need genlocking cameras for that - much more expensive.

And you wanted high speed (I assume you are refering to the frame rate?)
cameras, so you just multiplied your cost by 5 or 10 once more.

Alternatives are using two firwire camcorders, but they are not in sync
either (unless you got for the $3k and higher models), or Web Cams, but both
of them compress the video signal and you not only lose important quality
and color resolution, you also have to decode the stereo image stream again.

So, if you want to be cheap, get two of those surveilance cameras mounted on
an accesable PCB with composite out and run them through the same Quarz
Cristal and Reset circuit to keep them in sync. Get two non-compressing
video boards and you'll be in business for under $400.

Or, get high spped cameras that usually come with a PC adapter and are
syncable by nature, but don't expect to pay under, wild guess, $5k for the
pair.

http://www.visiblesolutions.com/phantomv9.html (for example, no idea what
the pricing is)

 

[Ian Stirling]

Hi all -

I am interested in a hardware setup that satisfy the following requirements:

1) 2 cameras will capture color images at a very high frame rate

10fps, 100000fps?


If you're talking video, then it's a boring solved problem.
Go down to your local PC shop, and purchase two 'TV' cards.
Linux makes it very easy to deal with the video stream.
I did a trivial little "average over 100 frames" thingy in about 100 lines
of C.