uCam- TLL

teganburns

hi my name is Tegan Burns and I recently bought the uCam-tll and need help interfacing the device with the propeller. I have the Programming and customizing the multi core propeller microcontroller book but It didn't seem to help me with this. It would help me out a lot if you could check this link out ( http://www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=75 ) and lemme know what to do. Thank you!

ericball

The interface will be simple as it's just 8N1 serial. The bigger challenge is handling the picture data. The Propeller only has 32K of RAM and doesn't have a hardware multiply so JPEG decoding will be very slow. That's assuming you're not going to just attach an SD card and write the data to it.

i8051

Some information will help you:

http://www.ikalogic.com/image-processing-as-a-sensor/

http://www.cmucam.org/projects/cmucam4

Ariba

@ericball

From the description on the linked website:
"User commands are sent using a simple serial protocol that can instruct the camera to send low resolution (160x120 or 80x60) single frame raw images for a quick viewing or high resolution (640x480 or 320x240) JPEG images for storage or viewing."

So 160x120 and 80x60 pictures should be possible with the Propeller. These resolutions fit well to the video generation capabilities of the Prop.

Andy

teganburns

Ok do you know of any propeller books that can help me with 8N1. Out am i at the point where it would be better to just learn c or c++? Cause my main problem is the code. I'm thinking i will use a single board computer .to process the camera

Ariba

8N1 means just a serial communication with 8 databits, 1 stopbit and No parity checking. This is the normal format of the FullDuplexSerial driver on the Propeller.

While reading the datasheet of the camera I have extracted the important infos into a Spin code, which is attached.
These code is for sure untested, I don't have such a camera. But it compiles, that's a good start...

To try it out, you need to connect the camera at portpins P0 and P1 and use the Parallax Serial Terminal (PST) for the debug output.
The code should be commented enough to compare it with the description in the datasheet. If it is too complex for you, then work first through a few tutorials that use the FullDuplexSerial driver for serial connection.
Good luck

Andy

teganburns

I tried to code out and I believe it is communicating. when TX an Rx are not connected the try to connect to camera and no response show up at the same time. when connected they try to connect to camera shows up, and then there is a wait period until I get a no response. I will do more research on the full duplex serial object. if I find a solution then I will get back to this thread with a video link tutorial. Thanks!

teganburns

Just wanted to get back to this thread. @Ariba Your code worked!! The colors of the wire were false to actual pin-out of the camera...(that was a pain). If you look at the uCam-Tll.jpeg attachment that is the communication with the test software through a serial to uart converter. I was able to receive a picture at 128 x 128. JPEG still has some error with the image size, im gonna have to check that out. The second picture is the com. with the propeller, everything is going great until it tries to get a picture. I waited some time for any response but don't get a thing. I'm going to try and work with the lower resolution for now but need help with saving a picture to a micro sd card...?