Week 11: Input Devices

JPEG and Video Camera Input

For my input device, I want to use some sort of camera that can send a stream of images to be processed. After searching and looking at various sensors, Alex Kaspar and I settled on the Adafruit Miniature TTL Serial JPEG Camera with NTSC Video device here, because it looked to be one of the lightest devices we could find (it has to be light since it will be acting as a payload on the ornithopter) and because it was able to either take JPEG photos or stream video in color with reasonable resolution.

When I started trying to figure out the signal processing portion of this endeavor, I realized that it would actually be very difficult to do video streaming due to the high sampling rate and bit depth required of the processor. My detailed notes are presented below:

I decided that it would be much cheaper and require much less bulky+powerful hardware if I used the TX and RX lines on the PCT06 instead to take lots of high frequency photos to simulate the feeling of having a video stream. After researching and inquiring Gavin in lab, it seems like the nRF52 will be able to directly handle communications with the camera sensor since it essentially has a powerful built-in microcontroller. My notes on this are below:

I will be doing further work in this.

Note: I discuss the issues with using the camera in my final project (specifically, how I tried to use the NRF52 since other chips were not powerful enough). I also implemented a basic visible light sensor/photoresistor for my final project that decreases in resistivity when there is more light.