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seeking HW + SW system to do pixel processing algorithm dev



 
 
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  #1  
Old February 17th 14, 03:16 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
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Default seeking HW + SW system to do pixel processing algorithm dev

I am looking for this, and here are some comments I made in another group about the arduino camera, to give you the flavor of the search:

Nobody ever bothers to do it that way. They buy one of a certain handful

of models of webcam and hack them to do what is needed.



http://www.qcuiag.org.uk/

Yes, they do that, and I am hoping someone on that yahoo group will have done what I want to do. Here is a comment on the arduino camera mentioned above. The Good, Bad, and Ugly. First, it is a low cost way of getting an image under computer control. And for the nuts-and-bolts builder, you have a Real Time video of what the image sensor sees. (after that, you can put it into snap shot mode.) How useful is that!
Now the bad: A snap shot with this board requires a SD card on the arduino. The pic is loaded onto the card, and then must be transferred to the PC - taking 30 seconds or more. (The video described above is via direct NTSC output.) And what the PC sees is a jpg.
The Ugly: There is no evident way to do a RT-ish pixel programming with this thing. It doesn't look like the image is accessible in any memory image so that some C code can do segmentation and other tricks of simple image analysis. Further, it seems that the arduino uses something called "sketches." Is there a C compiler which can access the image? Dunno, but doesn't look good. Finally, it would be nice to have access of the pixel train as it issues from the chip. This is a "nice to have," so no big deal.

So you see, my requirements are more stringent than creating nice astronomy pictures. BUT - it could be that the software is available somewhere, or that the image is somehow available on the arduino for processing there.

A computer image capture device without software access to the pixels is like a car without a steering wheel that stays parked in the driveway. It's basically just a computer-controlled camera. Getting back to the Jupiter picture example, what I want is an image of Jupiter AND a way to scan it for events automatically, programmed by me.

Nevertheless, the pointers are very valuable, particularly the astronomy group. I think it likely that somebody there has done image analysis from an imaging chip. Plus signal enhancement.

I got into the image software by doing OCR programming of documents like fedex trucking forms. I used neural nets for the character recognition, and other approaches for alignment, etc. This current project is actually much easier.

any ideas welcome. JB

  #2  
Old February 17th 14, 05:38 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Bill[_9_]
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Default seeking HW + SW system to do pixel processing algorithm dev

On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 06:16:59 -0800 (PST), wrote:

Yes, they do that, and I am hoping someone on that yahoo group will have done what I want to do. Here is a comment on the arduino camera mentioned above. The Good, Bad, and Ugly. First, it is a low cost way of getting an image under computer control. And for the nuts-and-bolts builder, you have a Real Time video of what the image sensor sees. (after that, you can put it into snap shot mode.) How useful is that!
Now the bad: A snap shot with this board requires a SD card on the arduino. The pic is loaded onto the card, and then must be transferred to the PC - taking 30 seconds or more. (The video described above is via direct NTSC output.) And what the PC sees is a jpg.
The Ugly: There is no evident way to do a RT-ish pixel programming with this thing. It doesn't look like the image is accessible in any memory image so that some C code can do segmentation and other tricks of simple image analysis. Further, it seems that the arduino uses something called "sketches." Is there a C compiler which can access the image? Dunno, but doesn't look good. Finally, it would be nice to have access of the pixel train as it issues from the chip. This is a "nice to have," so no big deal.

So you see, my requirements are more stringent than creating nice astronomy pictures. BUT - it could be that the software is available somewhere, or that the image is somehow available on the arduino for processing there.

A computer image capture device without software access to the pixels is like a car without a steering wheel that stays parked in the driveway. It's basically just a computer-controlled camera. Getting back to the Jupiter picture example, what I want is an image of Jupiter AND a way to scan it for events automatically, programmed by me.

Nevertheless, the pointers are very valuable, particularly the astronomy group. I think it likely that somebody there has done image analysis from an imaging chip. Plus signal enhancement.

I got into the image software by doing OCR programming of documents like fedex trucking forms. I used neural nets for the character recognition, and other approaches for alignment, etc. This current project is actually much easier.

any ideas welcome. JB



On the most basic level, it's really just a matter of opening the file
and reading the data from the file, and mapping that data into an
allocated region of RAM - once you have the data in RAM you can play
with the data as much as your imagination will permit.

This is not beyond the means of an intermediate level C/C++
programmer...but the learning curve could be steep. I haven't looked,
but I would bet that if you did - there's probably a god deal of
information and source code examples out there that could give you hints
and get you started.

Keep in mind, if you wish to do scientific analysis - you should
undersrtand, and pay attention to, the differences in the data/graphics
file formats you may encounter. There can be considerable loss of
information contained in your image from compressio, and pre-processing,
algorithms that may have been used to create your source files.
--
Email address is a Spam trap.
  #3  
Old February 17th 14, 11:55 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
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Default seeking HW + SW system to do pixel processing algorithm dev



This is not beyond the means of an intermediate level C/C++

programmer...but the learning curve could be steep. I haven't looked,

but I would bet that if you did - there's probably a god deal of

information and source code examples out there that could give you hints

and get you started.


Yes, this is just me pinging around to get lucky JB



  #5  
Old February 20th 14, 10:02 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
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Default seeking HW + SW system to do pixel processing algorithm dev

On Monday, February 17, 2014 6:48:43 PM UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 06:16:59 -0800 (PST), haiticare2011 -at -

wrote:



I am looking for this, and here are some comments I made in another group about the arduino camera, to give you the flavor of the search:




I've never played much with the Arduino. But I'm running meteor

detection software on a Raspberry Pi. Still experimenting, but code

written in Python (a language that kind of sucks, but is quick to get

running on a RPi... eventually I'll switch to C) can read frames off a

720x480 USB camera at 30 fps, do meteor detection, save event frames,

and upload raw measurements and frame stacks to a network server. This

using standard open source video capture libraries and video

processing libraries.



This is just possible with the latest RPi. I think it's probably

beyond the processing power of any Arduino model, but maybe not.


Nice. I am agnostic about which platform to put the code on - I'd like to correspond with you to see if I could get something going along your lines - I could get a C compiler going, for instanc. My email haiticare2011 at gmail dot com -
  #6  
Old March 1st 14, 04:08 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
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Default seeking HW + SW system to do pixel processing algorithm dev


After pinging around about this, I settled on a Raspberry Pi with a camera card.
The Pi is credit card size, and the camera card is about an inch square.
At least on paper, I haven't found anything wrong with this setup.

Advantages include:

1. The 5 mp camera is connected to the board by a fast parallel bus. It
will transfer video at 30 fps and 30 stills per sec.

2. The board has 512 mb to store the images.

3. The 700 mhz ARM processor runs Linux.

4. There is a graphics library for image analysis, OpenCV, on Linux.

5. The board has wifi for internet, usb, HDMI for monitor.

6. I think a usb HD would connect. A usb hub can accomodate kbd and ouse.

7. Of course, GPIO pins are there for control of circuits. ADC, DAC can be added.

8. Right now the cost US is $100 for Pi + cam. China is already lowering that by
20%.

9. The camera can sense NIR if a filter is removed.


That's about it.
JB
 




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