SparkFun Forums 

Where electronics enthusiasts find answers.

Have questions about a SparkFun product or board? This is the place to be.
By ejohns85
#17473
Hi there,

I am just starting a project involving a mobile robot, which navigates by tracking lights in a room, using a camera. I have decided that the necessary image processing requires more power than microcontrollers can offer, I do not have the resources to work with DSPs, and so I have decided to use wireless technology and do the processing on a PC. The project can be split up into the sections outline below - any help on getting started on any of it would be fantastic!

1. I need to purchase a video camera with a digital output, which can transmit the video wirelessley to a PC, at a frame rate of about 10 fps. Lets assume a resolution of around 100 x 100, and so using 24-bit images, this would require a wireless transmission rate of 2.4 Mbps.

2. I then need to write some software that can read in the pixel data from the wireless receiver, which would be attatched to the PC, perhaps via USB or serial. If I were to write this in C, how could I tell my PC to get this data and store it in an array, with which I could then do my image processing?

3. After processing the image, and determining the necessary signals to be sent to the robot (eg. which motor should be turned on/off), I need to create a wireless link to transmit signals from my PC to the robot, to set particular lines on my PCB to be high (5V) or low (0V). Any ideas?

Thank you for your help.

Ed.
By teekay_tk
#17482
for light tracking you can use 2 bit or 4 bit images, why 24 bit?
By wiml
#17488
One really simple way to do it would be to use one of those small analog video camera modules that transmit on 900MHz or wherever. Plug the receiver into a video digitizer attached to the computer. This is less elegant than digitizing the video onboard, but might be easier.
By Grimm Spector
#17592
wiml wrote:One really simple way to do it would be to use one of those small analog video camera modules that transmit on 900MHz or wherever. Plug the receiver into a video digitizer attached to the computer. This is less elegant than digitizing the video onboard, but might be easier.
do that but use a DVR card, it can output to a 'buffer file' in serial format and you can manipulate at will in real time.