m4088 Omnivision digital camera & LabVIEW project?

[PETRAN]

Hi everybody!

   Does anyone know of examples or projects with LabVIEW and CCD digital output camera
modules like m4088 (384x288, 8-bit pixel resolution)? I want to pass the data of the camera to a PC (via a PIC microcontroller and RS-232) and I want to project them in LabVIEW (in an array form, of course).

   NOTE: the ev48 evaluation board for the specific camera is not available so I don't need the IMAQ and Vision software. I want to make a block diagram where I can get each byte from the serial port and put it in a 384x288 matrix and so on and so forth so that I can achieve video streaming.

   If anyone has done something similar, please send me details.

Thanks, Peter!!!

[PETRAN]

Hey guys,

I attach a block diagram where I get every single incoming byte(=pixel) from the serial port and I put each byte in a 288x384 matrix(=1 frame) and so on and so forth so that I can achieve video streaming.

Is this diagram correct, regarding the aforementioned application?

[MarcoPolo5]

Your block diagram looks good but I would point out how the 'String to Byte Array.vi' converts the string to bytes: "The first byte in the array has the ASCII value of the first character in string, the second byte has the second value, and so on." - so make sure that your PIC is sending out the single ascii character that corresponds to the value of the pixel you capture.

Also - you will probably have to add some type of communication to sychronize the start of a picture acquisition.

Remember that PC serial ports normally can only go to ~115kbps - this is not extremely fast for x-fering pic data. Your 288x384 matrix is ~111kbytes - that would take ~ 1 sec to x-fer giving you a maximum of ~1 frame/sec.

If you need faster serial communication (and your PIC is capable of handling it) - NI does have PCI serial boards that provide up to 1Mb/s RS-232 serial x-fer rates. See:

http://www.ni.com/serial/