SparkFun Forums

[jaytee0108]

Hi everyone,

I'm workign on a project that requires a wifi camera. All the wifi camera on the market are much too bulky for the purpose of the project. I was wondering if it is possible to convert a regular webcam into a wifi webcam using an Airborne module? If so can you give me some pointers of where to start?

Jimmy

[ghint]

Hi everyone,

I'm workign on a project that requires a wifi camera. All the wifi camera on the market are much too bulky for the purpose of the project. I was wondering if it is possible to convert a regular webcam into a wifi webcam using an Airborne module? If so can you give me some pointers of where to start?

Jimmy

Anything is possible. You need an mcu to interface the camera (and you need to know the camera's output format). That imu would then broadcast the camera data via wifi in a format of your choice (you'll need to do any conversions on the mcu). Say the camera outputs a pixel array with a size 320x240 pixels * 3 (r,g,b) * pixel depth (8,16,etc). You can read that data raw and simply fwrite it to the airborne module.

Of course, possible doesn't mean it's already done and ready to use.

My advice, get an i2c cam with a documented output format. Most webcams have free opensource drivers (check out macam on sourceforge. It's an open source mac driver for lots of cams. Forget the driver part and read the output format of your webcam of choice. it's all there). Then interface your mcu with the cam and implement i2c data read. I have never used the airborne module and don't know what are the mcu requirements, but choose one for which there is already a UDP stack ready made (atmegas are great for these projects). Then read the data, convert to a format of choice (bitmaps like the one i mentioned above are great for debug) and write it to the module. Whatever machine is on the other side will receive the broadcast.

Filipe

[silic0re]

if size on the receiving end isn't an issue, you could always get a mini colour ccd camera that outputs NTSC and a little wireless transmitter for that. Then, at the receiving end, you can connect the receiver up to a "tv card" or the like to get the data into your computer.

the potentially really nice part about this scheme is that there is very little to build, it has the potential to be inexpensive, and TV cards generally seem to capture at a relatively constant framerate and are often connected directly to the bus, so there won't be any issues with your "30fps max" webcam capturing 2fps at 160x120.... (as it tries to squeeze a great deal of data down the USB bus)

hope that helps
silic0re