fpga4fun.com

Hello,

I'm a student doing a project on implementing optical flow algorithm into FPGA.
Basically, i would like to mount a camera ( preferably webcam coz its cheap) onto a FPGA( my college currently has up2 and up3 @ltera education board) and it do some image/video processing in FPGA and display in an LCD or CRT monitor.

As for my part, I'm doing the input part. That is getting the data(image frames) ready for calculation in the FPGA. the Frame Grabber should grab image frames from the camera and converts it into gray-scale and saves it in Matrix form or what ever meaningful form. It's quite a challenging project Very Happy so, I need all the advise/help that all I can get.


From what I read throughout the forum. Is true that is the least practical to use a USB device on FPGA? The up3 board that I'm using has USB port, so I was thinking of just using my cheap webcam that I've already own. What do I need to prepare if I decide to use the USB webcam? I found out that there's a USB port in up3 board and there is ip-core on USB in opencore.org. What other better alternatives do you guys suggest? and what other advises would give regarding my project on the Frame grabber.

Thank you for your precious time on reading this.

Regards,

Sim

Check if your camera has an open source driver that is easy to understand. If not then you buy a cheap camera with connection details from sparkfun.com or some other place.

If you have to ask questions on this forum you are never going to be able to reverse engineer some random USB protocol.

The webcam that I'm using is Logitech Quickcam Express, Product ID:0x046d vendor id:0x0928 sensor:embedded. It streams gbrg format.

I found some Linux drivers for this webcam. but i was wondering if its just as simple as 'plug and play' with FPGA boards. what else do i need to prepare as it is a USB webcam

Check google for information, if someone has made the code available you will find it there. If not you have to figure it out yourself.

With FPGAs there is no plug and play, you have to borrow someone elses code or do it yourself.

I found some open source driver for my logitech quickcam express in other linux forums.
So, i was thinking whether i could read up the source code of the driver and try to figure out which codes commands the webcam.

On the ipcore issue. I found some usb 1.1 host and slave controllers ip cores in opencore.org. I quite new to this usb interface. Since host(fpga) commands the slave(webcam) what to do. does it mean that after I can use the codes that i have derived from the linux driver then i can use the code on the host controller to command the webcam to some operations? Or the usb host/slave controller just manages the interface only and do not do any processing operations.

On the other hand, i need to save the image into a memory. So, i need memory ip core, right? And the most difficult part wud the image processing. I havent found any image processing ip cores at the moment. I need to resize the image and change it in grayscale form. Could i build those operations in Matlab/dsp builder? Any dsp builder experience user here? haha.

Anyhow, on the final issue. How do i or more importantly could i join the the ipcores with the circuit that i have built in dsp builder/simulink/matlab?

If the above strategies could not work then i might just install a soft processor into the fpga and install uclinux and do the image processing in C++.

Any ideas? which strategy is more feasible?