Hi guys ,
Just wanted to know if its possible to interface 2
CMOS cameras to the Expansion port on the beagle board as i need 2
images at same time stamp for optical vision of my robot .
Thanks,
Ravi
I don’t think so. That is too much data to pass via the MMC interface, which is the fastest port there is on the expansion header. If they were very low resolution cameras and a slow framerate, it might be possible with an FPGA to make it work. Your best bet is to try USB cameras for this application.
Gerald
The resolution i am looking for is 720x576 probably at atleast 15fps.
I would be processing only the Luma component of it and ignoring the chroma.
Will the help as i would be using only Luma ? Does the hardware support multiplexing between the cameras atleast ?
You would need to provide external circuitry to connect to the the camera. There are GPIO pins that could be used to switch between two cameras. I would think that it would need to ge interlaced so that both cameras could be read at close to the same time. So, in essence your framerate is now 30FPs, 15 each, to handle both cameras. This could be handeld by an FPGA. SO, to the MMC interface as long as it dos not exceed 48MHz totla rate and no more than 8bits per transfer, in theory it could be done.
Gerald
Cool thanks Gerald 
I appreciate your active participation in this thread.
Any reason the ISP interface couldn’t be used? Its 12 bits wide and can run with a pixel clock up to 75Mhz. An FPGA could be used to mux the sensors together.
But it would be more painful than using two USB cameras…
Steve
Gerald Coley wrote:
Yes. It isn’t brought out on the Rev C.
Gerald
All,
I know that the CMOS camera Interface is not exposed on the
Rev C4 board. Does anyone have a clue what I can do hardware-wise
to bring it out for my application? Any pins I can solder at the back
of the board?
Thanks,
Ad.
There is no way you can solder wires anywhere on the board to bring those signals out. You can try the Overo board or wait for the XM in a few months.
Gerald
Gerald,
Perhaps this (camera) is one interface that need to come out (refer to our earlier discussion of what signals are good candidates to get mapped to headers).
Regards,
Sri.
It is coming on the XM board.
Gerald
Gerald,
what CPU model will be used at XM board? I don’t find any ARM processors running at 1GHz from TI. Please clarify
Max
2010/3/2 Gerald Coley <gerald@beagleboard.org>
It is a NEW processor yet to be announced. It is a Cortex A8 running at 1GHz. It is very close to the 3530.
Gerald
I guess it is OMAP4440.
Will XM board have the open source design? Anyway I don’t think TI will be shipping this processor to a public market this year except for Smartphone vendors.
2010/3/3 Gerald Coley <gerald@beagleboard.org>
It is NOT OMAP4440 based. I said A8, not A9. It will be an open source design as always. Th eprocessor use don XM will be able to be bought by anyone.
Gerald