Could I interface a Webcam directly to a PICAXE 28X1 board?

Help & Support Robot Parts
1

I have went on the spark fun forms and I was told that I can not use the CMOS camera because it uses a parallel bus to send out the video data instead of a serial bus and the I2C buses are used just to tweak the settings. But I also have another idea. I have been looking at the USB breakout board tutorial on the spark fun website and I was wondering since a USB is a serial bus then by using the break out board and a web cam would I be able to interface it directly to the PICAXE 28X1 board and then send the video from that webcam to my computer over a wireless connection?

I am considering this possibility for 3 reasons:

  1. The parts are more locally available.

  2. Webcams are cheap (about $40)

  3. My only other option is a JPEG Color Camera with a UART Interface on the Spark fun website (link) but it would be about $60 with shipping and since it is more for taking photos then video I am not sure if it will work or not.

So what do you think? Is it possible? Thanks for all your help in advance :slight_smile:

2

Ok well how about the CMOS camera that I have. Is there a way to convert the parallel output to a serial output? I found some code in C/C++ and thought if I loaded it into a microcontroller I could use that to convert the single.

3

OK I am now just exploring this possibility now because a new electronic supply store recently opened in our town and I have been wanting to try to build my own circuit boards so I want to try to make a small breakout board for the CMOS camera that will change the parallel connection to a serial connection as my first project.

Thank you for all of your help :smiley:

4

The proper and suggested way of providing wireless video is using video transmitter/receiver pairs as a compeltely seperate system from the PICAXE:

robotshop.ca/audio-video-telemetry-2.html

The video/audio signals from the camera can be interfaced more easily this way. Instead of a cheap webcam, you can use an equally cheap camera with regular RCA output connectors. The PICAXE does not have native USB host capabilities.

5

This is a bit experimental, and we can not confirm this but the CMOS camera outputs “8bit parallel data”, so maybe you can try using an 8 bit shift register such as the 74HCT166. You can also do this in software such as for parallel LCD displays, it just uses more pins on your MCU.