Mini-PVR (Low-Res vid capture to SD)

It would be awesome if there was some BoB that allowed low-res (320line or there abouts PAL) video capture to SD.

Something that either captured to an on-BoB microSD slot or used SPI to talk to an external one.

Even if it used a custom filesystem, or did raw, as long as you could read it back on a PC…

This would allow video capture with lower powered controllers like the Arduino…

You would most likley need some sort of FPGA for that, add in compression and it becomes a bit more complex…

There are no single chip solutions that do what you want (apart from the kind of ASIC’s in video cameras etc).

gussy:
You would most likley need some sort of FPGA for that, add in compression and it becomes a bit more complex…

There are no single chip solutions that do what you want (apart from the kind of ASIC’s in video cameras etc).

I’m being harrased to look at incorporating this somehow into my current project… if I have to learn something else to make a’module’ I guess I can… :slight_smile: I was thinking an ARM, but I guess its figuring out an FPGA instead…

Any directions you can point me in then?

That’s about where my FPGA experience finishes. Someone else is going to need to chime in, but I can tell you it won’t be a straightforward process. It is a whole project in itself.

Then again, it depends what your image sensor is. If it is one of those UART/Serial JPEG cameras then it is quite simple to grab a frame a store it. This can be done on a AVR or PIC or ARM.

gussy:
That’s about where my FPGA experience finishes. Someone else is going to need to chime in, but I can tell you it won’t be a straightforward process. It is a whole project in itself.

Then again, it depends what your image sensor is. If it is one of those UART/Serial JPEG cameras then it is quite simple to grab a frame a store it. This can be done on a AVR or PIC or ARM.

I must admit I didn’t read the datasheet, and am just assuming here, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get 25FPS by using still images that are stored… I should probably go and have a look… I could happily dedicated a Pro-Mini to just ‘driving the camera’… hmmmmmmm

The Broadcom BCM2724 is built to do what you are talking about. It is in the sandisk v-mate memory card recorder. They support pal/ntsc. Memory card: sd (mini/micro/standard), compact flash, memory stick. You can find them on ebay and online for around 30$ usd. They have drawbacks related to the remote control but there are control traces on the board itself if you wanted to put buttons on it.