SparkFun Forums

[Guest]

hi, are there any small low res camera chips that could be used with a micro? I am trying to use a hacked gameboy camera. I was wondering if there were any I could order for a aproximitly 128 x 128 b&w image. 64 by 64 could even work. Higher would be better. But I am looking for avalibility and low price.

[D. Yates]

I've been searching for something like that for a *long* time. The only viable options I've found are only interested in selling lots by the thousands. Sometimes you can find the old "serial" web-cams, which are pretty easy to interface to with a micro. I'm holding high hopes for the USB micros to make interfacing to USB webcams that much easier, but so far they can't do host mode.

Nathan - If you guys could get some stock of those cheap cell-phone type cmos cameras that interface to micros I think there might be a good niche market out here for them.

[D. Yates]

I just remembered another solution to mention to the OP. If you can dig up some of those cheap "spy-cams" that generate a composite video signal, its possible to decode the video into usable images.

[badpacket]

Hmm, very old link however rembered seeing it recently.

Cool place, cheap camera
http://www.windsordistributors.com/onli ... roductlist

[NleahciM]

You might want to check out the OV6620 or the OV7620 - they are both fairly low resolution and they have both digital and analog outputs. I'm just starting up work on a board that will use the OV7620 myself. I'd suggest taking a look at the CMUcam and the AVRcam - they both use these chips.

[NateW]

A cell phone camera would be pretty cool. Those are tiny, cheap, and the even the low-resolution cameras these days are 640x480.

It would be really cool to see a cell phone camera on a surface-mount version of http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~cmucam2/ or http://www.jrobot.net/Projects/AVRcam.html for a super-small color-tracking camera. CMU wants to license their design; the AVRc-cam guy gives away the source (GPL) but I'm not sure what the licensing terms are for the schematics (they are posted on his site though).

If you're looking for a new product idea, that gets my vote. My bank account will need some time to recover from the last new product idea I suggested, though. (not that I'm complaining!)

[SOI_Sentinel]

It's funny, I've been researching a related issue lately. I've been wanting to do an AVR-CAM type project, but use a DSP (dsPIC?) or FPGA for image processing and a higher resolution CCD/CMOS sensor.

I've considered tearing apart cheap multi-megapixel cameras (there are some that list the 3 or 5 megapixel imagers from Omnivision). ST Microelectronics also has sensors that are readily available. Digikey carries both the sensors and their associated image correction and translation chips from 640x480 to 2Mpixel . You'd need both chips due to the raw output of the sensors being very raw and being a LVDS pair. They do have one assembled 640x480 card at Digikey, though. About $20 for that, although the connectors might be a bit more than a hobbyist wants to mess with.

Digikey:
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch ... 35&Site=US

Datasheet:
http://www.st.com/stonline/products/lit ... vs6524.pdf

Major issue with most of my prospects are that most need an external lens. this obviously becomes a bit of an optical or mechanical engineering challenge then.

One other option you could go with is build a video digitizer, then you could use a cheap, raw NTSC or PAL micro video camera or even your normal digital camera or a camcorder for a video feed.

[sparky]

Unfortunately links to Digikey parts rarely work - do a search for VS6524 if SOI's link doesn't work for you.

Looks like a nice sensor! I'd rather see it in a ZIF ribbon configuration.

-Nathan

[SOI_Sentinel]

I'd like to build my own modules out of their VGA and 1MP camera units, but I don't know if the LVDS link is compatible with double sided standard FR4. Might be something for Sparky to consider. Camera modules really do seem to be something that many places don't sell, despite the apparent popularity of the CMUCam series and the upcoming interest in the AVR-CAM. Although it probaly won't be as interesting to many general public roboticists without the built in object tracking.

[sparky]

That camera interface looks surprisingly close to the GM862 camera interface. Unforunately the VS6524 reference manual has yet to be discovered, so I dunno what the pinout is. I'll keep looking. We'll stock them as soon as we can get them.

-Nathan