SparkFun Forums

[reklipz]

Well, I've got a couple of these and it's little brother, and I'm excited to start using them.

I've hand soldered wires (that terminate in a .1" male heading) to all 24 leads of the larger one, but I'm afraid to start coding. I don't expect to capture an image, but I'm hoping that at least my solder job wasn't for not and that I can get some sort of response from the camera.

As for a breakout board, I'm interested in obtaining one as well. I'm afraid that even if I did solder the wires correctly, they may be susceptible to noise and the heat from the soldering iron may have ruined the camera sensor(I doubt it, but I hear they are really sensitive...).

ghavenga, the large amounts of data come out via 8 bit parallel, not I2C, so the SPI converter may not be necessary...

KreAture, awesome job on the image capture! was that done with jpeg, YUV, or RGB output?

-Nate

[KreAture]

The image capture was in RGB mode, and only the blue data was sent to host. (green bits masked to 0)

Unfortunately I do not know what register modification made the cam behave at all, so I can't reproduce it yet. Atleast my code now allows me to capture data up to 320x240 while sending to PC and my rs232 is running at 900kbaud now.

If only I can get the cam in full auto mode for brightess, contrast, exposure and color balance it would be easier to get the x/y setting correct.

The breakout board is running ok, but I think I will add a small change with some sort of level conversion. 2.8v of camera is not practical for avr's especially ones you want to run at very high speeds maby even overclocked. I'll rack my brain and see what I can come up with.

[KreAture]

New progress...
CBMODE flag means Color Bar Mode (duh?)
At 160x120 mode it then spits out this:


The image has been auto-level converted as it was alost entirely black.
RGB mode again, only blue data.

[KreAture]

I had to expand my code to split the 565 RGB data to 888 so I could get this image. It was worth it to finally see colors



I think it's inverted though as I send BGR not RGB
Atleast it's possible to keep up with the chip in RGB mode if you cheat a bit on the clock input

[JD]

I’ve been following this thread and thought some people might like to know Xilinx is running a special on a development kit for their Microblaze processor. Supposedly for $395 it has a full license for their EDK, a USB download cable + some hardware to play with. The kit is:
DO-SD1800A-EDK-DK-UNI-G-J-PROMO

http://www.xilinx.com/products/devkits/ ... -UNI-G.htm

Regards,
JD

[KreAture]

I would never use such a cannon for such a simple/cheap solution.
It's like embedding a pentium to read the data of a temperature sensor...

I for one will stick to trying to figure out theese registers, and if it can't work with a low mips mcu without a tonn of extra logic, then it isn't worth it. There are plenty of other sensor chips that are better documented and I'll rather use one of those.
For my design all I want is a sensor chip, a mcu and a memory device like a mini/microSD. No cannons to shoot this sparrow.

I may use the STM32 kit I have here to help facilitate the analysis and discovery, but that's way too pricey for the final version.

[KreAture]

Well, I'm not quite "there" yet but felt this should be shared...

As you can see, it's humanoid. Camera is definately not using it's auto functions or I'd not be purple. (Actually I was green untill I auto-balanced it.)

The image is still not full frame. Somehow it refuses to work with the correct area. It is however a good start in the general direction I want to go. This time I can reproduce it too, so atleast there's a chance of learning what some more bits are doing.'

After the chineese hollidays I might get an ansver from china too. Hopefully a final version of the datasheet, not the draft... (Yes, I can say that now being finally deemed worthy!)

[KreAture]

What would you guys want in the breakoutboard?
I am asking as I might do a few changes and etch a couple to you. Not just from the goodness of my heart. I also think the more ppl picking at the registers in this camera, the more a chance we have at getting some more usefull stuff out of it.

My current board has two regulators on it. A 1.6v for the core, and a 2.8v for the I/O. Both are 150mA regulators so they will handle the cameras requirements barely.

The thing is, many might want to use 3.3v or 5v on their microcontroller and that wouldn't be too great with this setup. Even though 3.3v would eek by, it wouldn't deliver much headroom for the 2.8v regulator. Frankly it's not ideal for the I/O either on a 2.8v platform.

Maby some simple level conversion would be good. The complex stuff would be on the SDA pin as that is the only 2-way pin.

I just want your opinions and ideas. It might be a quick fix to make the breakout board something you would all find usefull.

[reklipz]

I think just having all of the pins broken out to fit a standard dip socket would be what I would want. I could handle the voltage regulation and level shifting off board.

If I wanted more, it would only be to have regulation on board, the 1.6V and probably 2.5V as opposed to 2.8V, but that's just me. With switching regulators, it should be a simple switch of a resistor to get the different voltage (and probably the same with the 2.8V). And depending on what type of regulator, you could probably get a buck/boost so the source voltage could be a fairly wide range.

I've been pretty bogged down with school work and work work, so I've not had much time to work on a board for this guy, but I do agree the more we can do the cheaper we should be able to get them.

I really wish SFE would let us know if they are already working on one though...

[KreAture]

I already have 2 linear regs for the supply. Currently "MIC5205BMS TR" which has low drop and adjustable output with seperate ground reference. Changing output voltage is a simple equation. No ground-current compensation or such.

The cam is quite sensitive to switching noise so I opted to not use swmode regs. It doesn't draw that much power so it seems fine as-is.

I'll add 0-Ohms resistors to the signal pinns so one can add series resistors if needed. This might also help when running MCU at 5v or such to limit input-current.

Pullup resistors will be put on SDA and SCL as well as reset to ensure valid signals.

Spacing it out a bit more would also make it easier to solder.

The board will have two 2x5-pin headers carrying 8 signals pluss power and ground. One for data and one for control. I have matched these to STK500 so that the data port can be directly linked. Depending on the way you want to control the cam, the control port could possibly be directly linked too but for interrupt driving or such, a squid-cable could be used depending on MCU.

[pellepl]

Just got me a pair of those cameras as well, and it seems someone is doing the PCB job for me - nice indeed! What about the clock - will there be an onboard oscillator or would I need to feed the clock signal through a pin myself?

[reklipz]

Wouldn't you need at least a 15 pin header?

Power + ground
8 data lines, 1 clock line
V+H blanking
SDA/SCL

?

[KreAture]

pellepl Yes, the PCB is almost done

There won't be a clock as the mcu you use to talk to it should ideally be synched to it for ease of readout. Essentially, you should thus create the clock. (use HW pwm!)


reklipz There are two 8+2 pin headers. A total of 20 pinns.

First header is for data only + gnd/pwr.
Second has EXTCLK, VBLK, HBLK, DCLK, STROBE, RESET, SDA, SCL + gnd/pwr.

The headers are positioned on opposite side of the pcb so you won't have any dangly wires on the side with the cam.

[KreAture]

Here's how the pcb looks now:


"features":
- 1-sided pcb
- Camera/components on copper side
- connectors on back
- series resistors available on all signals
- pulldown available on RESET
- pullup available on SDA / SCL

Pinout DATA connector:
1 DATA0
2 DATA1
3 DATA2
4 DATA3
5 DATA4
6 DATA5
7 DATA6
8 DATA7
9 GND
10 PWR

Pinout for CTRL connector:
1 SCL
2 RESET
3 EXTCLK
4 SDA
5 HBLK
6 STROBE
7 DCLK
8 VBLK
9 GND
10 PWR

Due to power dissapation I don't think input voltage should be abowe 5v.

Going to etch a couple bords tomorrow and make sure its all good

[reklipz]

The board looks very good!

Do you know how much you would be selling these for?

I may be interested in more than two.

Let us know how it goes!

-Nate