Which cam do u propose to buy for BlackWidow?

[iliasmoutz]

Hi everyone i'm a newbie. So i like to ask u to give me a list of compatible cameras for blackwidow for a project that i'm working on... I would be very grateful because I don't want to ruin my blackwidow...

[GregEigsti]

Welcome!

What is it that you are trying to achieve? Are you looking to capture a still image, a stream of images (movie), color images, black and white images, infrared images, thermal images? Or are you wanting to achieve camera control (e.g. pan/tilt/zoom/shutter)? Or all of the above. Or are you looking for an old SLR camera that would make a unique and tasty housing for your BW?

I am not aware of any list of compatible cameras but if you can provide some details then possibly someone with experience can share their knowledge.

Greg

[iliasmoutz]

I just want to take a snapshot every 5 sec and show me that image. I prefer to be color images for better viewing.... And camera contror would be a very good idea!!! Also I seek for reasonable prices, not very expensive cameras to do my job....
I found on the net this one: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc ... ts_id=7904 and i wonder if its good or not...
Because i want to connect some extra sensors on my BW and as i see this one requires many pins in I/O ports....

[GregEigsti]

One thought that I had was to send you to Sparkfun to see what they offered I took a quick look at a few of their cameras and saw (basically) two types of pinouts - but I did not spend too much time looking. One pinout utilized "video out" to get at the data - presumably this is NTSC/PAL video and won't be directly compatible with the BW (without extra circuitry anyway). The camera for the breakout board that you linked to appear to have an i2c connection which I take to mean that the camera data is available in a digital format and presumably this would work with the BW. I think with whatever camera you choose you will want to make sure that it has a digital output (for example the data could be dowloaded as a JPG). Both an i2c or SPI bus/connection should work fine with the BW - though you will want to make sure that the connection type will work with the available/free pins on the BW.

As far as adding pan/tilt/etc. I'd reccomend looking at a servo or two controlled by a motor controller. Again you will want to be careful to plan out your BW pin usage beforehand to make sure that it all works together.

Keep us informed about your potential hardware choices!

Greg

[spidermonkey04]

It's weird this topic comes up as I've just started working on this. I'm working on a weather station that will be permanently fixed outside, up a TV antenna tower. It's been working great over wifi and now I want to add a camera to catch shots of the sunset or whatever. So I came across this serial camera http://www.cutedigi.com/product_info.php?products_id=4355&osCsid=7d594b2622cb1511c125342c5ba61fe3 It compresses an image into a jpeg and sends it over serial interface (Dig0+1) to the arduino. The compressed image appears to be about 12,000 bytes, so you could either save it (Dataflash ) or send it off right away, packet by packet. I kinda want to send it right away. I've heard of people getting .75-1fps easy from it so you shouldn't have a problem getting one every 5 seconds. The cams cheaper than others, but you have to bypass or remove the rs232 chip to bring the levels down to 0-5v for arduino. No biggie though. I've been working with it for a few days so I'll see what I can come up with on the software side.
As far as pan/tilt, like greg said, you could use a little servo but I have no experience with that.
---Jared

[GregEigsti]

Depending upon which "WiShield app type" that you are using there are some tricks that you can play to get more throughput out of the WiShield. My experience has been with "amping up" a TCP/UDP socket app (mainly) by decreasing the amount of time that the uIP poll timer uses (in stack.c). In order to have the best effect you'll need to get pretty familiar with the uIP stack. I mention this because you may just need to "amp it up" to get a good transfer rate out of the WiShield (for sending large datasets such as image files).

iliasmoutz looks like you lucked out - spidermonkey04 is one of the sharper spoons in the drawer, is really willing to help out and working on something very similar.

Greg

[iliasmoutz]

I believe it would be a good help for me!!!!! My project is similar to spidermonkey04's but instead of doing a weather station i just want to get humidity indication, temperature and i want to install the camera to take pictures... Also one of my thoughts is to use a servo to open and close a garage door that i will make in Thumbnail.... Could spidermonkey04 give me your code to test my project and do the necessary changes of what i'm seeking for? And also help each other as much as we can...

[spidermonkey04]

You got it. Code should be attached. I haven't gotten around to documenting the whole project yet. Check it out if ya want. http://REMOVED I also whipped up a Sidebar Gadget for windows machines. No camera stuff yet.

For the temperature and humidy, you could do them both with one chip. Sensirion's SHT15. Not sure what you mean about the garage door though.
---Jared

[iliasmoutz]

Thanks for postin the code!!!!You did a very nice project!!! For the garage door just thing of a door opening and closing by pushing an open/close button through the BW interface...
Also as i see you created an extra library? The MsTimer2.h did you do that for the 5 sec delay or more? Because i tried to compile it and found and found an error that i don't have that library...

[spidermonkey04]

I think I get what you're trying to do.
Most garage door motors would have two remotes. The wired remote (prob located by entrance to garage) and the wireless remote you keep in the car. You should be able to tie into either one. The wireless one MAY be easier since it's already battery powered so you know it uses low voltage. Both may require some type of voltage level conversion though, to bring it between 0-5v for arduino. Just make sure you secure this whole thing somehow, you'd hate to have all of your tools and stuff stolen from the garage!

The MsTimer2 library is not my work, and can be found here. http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/MsTimer2 I use it to calculate wind speed every 5 seconds. You may also need to get the SHT1x library for it to compile.

Also worth mentioning, the picture size for that serial cam is alot smaller if I would have actually turned ON compression. Now it's about 4,500 bytes

---Jared