Vinculum and USB Cameras
william chan
Posts: 1,326
Hi,
Can the vinculum chip be used to capture images from a PC USB Webcam?
Thanks.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
Can the vinculum chip be used to capture images from a PC USB Webcam?
Thanks.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
Comments
The problem is the learning the vinculum is a big project. There are some example projects and I seem to recall one that downloads a USB camera memory directly·to a USB memory stick or SDcard. But, that is still images - not a live webcam.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
PLEASE CONSIDER the following:
Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······
Post Edited (Kramer) : 4/3/2008 6:12:43 PM GMT
There ares some factors that would affect this.
The first factor is the speed of the camera.· I believe most USB Cameras are High speed devices(480MB/s).· The Vinculum is only a full speed device (12MB/s).· You would have to locate a camera that is Full Speed in order for communication to work with the Vinculum...and the resolution will be very low.
I believe USB Cameras just stream frame information, and the PC does the data analysis.· So as far as 'snapshots' or other signal analysis, that is something that you would code.
I think that most cameras will enumerate as streaming devices and the USB Host would read the streaming data.· You would have to parse incoming data to locate the frame/pixel data and store it correctly.·
Maybe FTDI will come out with something that is compliant to USB 2.0....But that will probably be about the time that USB 3.0 is released (4.8GB/S!!!!)
·
I am only looking at still images, no need video.
Why is the Vinculum so complex and hard to learn?
How would the Vinculum tell the USB camera to start capture and start streaming the image data?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
You will be much better off buying a camera with a serial interface. There are a few VGA resolution camera modules out there that provide raw and jpeg compressed images over a serial port. They work well and would be a good substitute for a usb camera.
If you are still doubtful about how the vinculum works, download the various vinculum firmware manuals. The manual will show you exactly what the vinculum can do. If it's not in there, it's most likely not doable with that chip.
www.fujitsu.com/global/about/rd/200506palm-vein.html
that comes only in USB form.
I need to make a Door Access System using this sensor and embedded processors like Propeller.
Do you think Vinculum and Propeller is up to the task?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
I was left with the feeling·that it was mostly a 'no go' area for hobby electronics even though it is a very useful component.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
PLEASE CONSIDER the following:
Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······
Yeah. Most cameras are 'dumb' devices. They just send data. (Devices that have special features are definately high speed devices)...Your host is what determines if you want a still frame or a video. For example, when you click a 'snapshot' button in webcam software, it doesn't tell the camera to take a snapshot...It just waits for the next frame data marker in the streaming data, and saves that next frame. The Camera is still streaming the information. You (as a host) select what data you want.
Is there a spec sheet for the imaging unit that Fujitsu uses? All of this may be moot if it is a high speed device (with the resolution that is necessary to read veins tells me that it is most likely a high-speed device) because Vinculum won't be able to talk to it.
Post Edited (Steel) : 4/4/2008 3:21:34 PM GMT
193.128.183.41/support/fscan/manuals/palmsecure-bro-eng_oct_06.pdf
says it can work with both Full Speed and High Speed.
Seems like no datasheet is available.
It also says that host must be UHCI. Does Vinculum support UHCI?
Why does their USB connector use 5 pins?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.fd.com.my
www.mercedes.com.my
There are the four pins and ground to the outer case, right?
I strongly suspect this has to do with mice and keyboards that were produced with both PS2 and USB capacity in the transistion to an all USB computer.
The PS2 uses +5/0 TTL data and +5/0 TTL clock, while the USB uses a + and a - of .600 volts [noparse][[/noparse]something like an RS-485 tranciever]. So just maybe the 'unused USB line' is there for the PS2 clock to start that mode. In that case, the + line is probably shared by both the PS2 and the USB for data transmission.
Of course, this is all suspision.
By the way, PS2 should NEVER be hot plugged as the power surges are known to damage both the devices and the computer.· On the other hand, USB is designed to tolerate hot plugging without any damage.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
PLEASE CONSIDER the following:
Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······
Theres also EHCI, but thats irrelevant as thats only used for USB 2.0 High Speed devices.
I have no idea why they would specify UHCI, as it's only used by two companies: Intel and VIA. The Vinculum doesn't implement any of the HCIs I noted above, as they're a register interface used on PCs. From the looks of it, it requires a custom device driver. Theres no chance it will work with the Vinculum, unless you designed your own firmware and managed to get their interface specifications. Your gonna have lots of trouble interfacing this to anything less than a small PC.