Embedded Motion Detection

[DanDaManJC]

So for my embedded systems project my group's making an automatic turret gun that will shoot any moving target. This project is for an embedded systems class too.

So the way we would like to try to do the motion tracking is through image processing... but even at 640*480 pixels with 8bit greyscale, we'll have some 2.5million bits of data to work with, per frame. That said, we've looked into some of the DSP chips and they would have enough power -- the problem is that they're all bga based, which would mean lots of cost and time for the pcb (so X out that)... leaving the option for dev-boards. one of my profs was saying the philips trimedia chips are excellent.

in short, are there any relatively cheap dsp dev boards we could get our hands on for our project? else how would something like a sam9 do with the processing, there are some cheaper sam9 kits available on sparkfun that would be pretty fun. else... how else could we go about doing the image processing? or is the image processing just a bad idea flatout?

in conclusion, any tips and pointers would be great!

 

[CycloWizard]

I'm not sure about which boards might work, but there may also be other solutions. Depending on the noise levels in your image, you could simply trigger an interrupt if values from a pixel change. This interrupt could do a few things - tell you that motion is detected or fire up a region of interest (ROI) algorithm that would watch the area that changed very closely for some period of time. ROI decreases the number of pixels that you're worried about to allow more expensive/faster operations on that subset of the whole image.

 

[Modelworks]

You are not likely to find a dsp that can handle a full 640x480 image in a hobby friendly package. Image processing is fine, but I think you need to lower the resolution quite a bit. There are a lot of projects that use the SX chips for video processing because of their price and speed and they are usually pdip or dip so easy to work with.

Even the non pdip parts have very cheap development boards:
http://www.parallax.com/Store/...uctID/362/Default.aspx

Look at the project here and it might give you some ideas.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmucam2/

There is a complete schematic in the manual at that site as well as the theory behind it.

 

[DanDaManJC]

Thanks for the info guys, it's been very helpful

 

[blahblah99]

Originally posted by: DanDaManJC
So for my embedded systems project my group's making an automatic turret gun that will shoot any moving target. This project is for an embedded systems class too.

So the way we would like to try to do the motion tracking is through image processing... but even at 640*480 pixels with 8bit greyscale, we'll have some 2.5million bits of data to work with, per frame. That said, we've looked into some of the DSP chips and they would have enough power -- the problem is that they're all bga based, which would mean lots of cost and time for the pcb (so X out that)... leaving the option for dev-boards. one of my profs was saying the philips trimedia chips are excellent.

in short, are there any relatively cheap dsp dev boards we could get our hands on for our project? else how would something like a sam9 do with the processing, there are some cheaper sam9 kits available on sparkfun that would be pretty fun. else... how else could we go about doing the image processing? or is the image processing just a bad idea flatout?

in conclusion, any tips and pointers would be great!

Try looking into analog devices' sharc/blackfin dsps. They're eval/dev kits aren't too pricey either.

 

[Net]

we processed 640 x 480 @ 16 hz color in real-time to detect lane lines for vehicle automation using a Core 2 duo Mobile T7400 2.166GHz

camera: http://www.ptgrey.com/products/flea2/index.asp