Servo - May 2015

shows the results of this effort on the Picadillo 35T display, along with the FPS calculations.

Listing 5. Stream Image Data from the Camera

With this program — using a totally different library and LCD graphics display — I still see the uCAM-II blooming on me.

void loop(void)
{
 uint16_t n;
 
 // Lets get a picture!  I hope...
 Serial1.write(GETPIC,6); // Send the GET PICTURE command

It just seems to have problems with really dark colors like black and dark brown. Lighter colors like yellow, tan, and white seem to be fine.

for (n=0;n<6;n++) {
 while(!Serial1.available());
 status[n] = Serial1.read();
}
if (status[1] != CACK) { // ACK, that command passed
 Serial.println("We barfed on GET PICTURE.");

I will need to experiment more with the camera to see if I can improve its color palette. In terms of most robot vision operations, this is no big deal. The user can simply modify the color map table lookups to get the correct values, or simply deal with image changes to determine what to do.

 Serial.print("Error: ");Serial.println((int)status[4],HEX);
 while(1); // freeze here
}
 
 
for (n=0;n<6;n++) {
 while(!Serial1.available());
 status[n] = Serial1.read();
}
if (status[1] != CDATA) {  // We got the data response
 Serial.println("We barfed on the DATA return.");
 
 Serial.print("Error: ");Serial.println((int)status[4],HEX);
 while(1); // freeze here
}
// We aren't going to look at the image size, we know it already.

Conclusion

This board/LCD/camera combination shows promise in the cost/performance category with respect to folks that feel more comfortable with the simple “wired” interface that Arduino/chipKIT programming offers. It is really cool that the 4D

 while (!Serial1.available()); // wait for DATA response
 for (n=0;n<16384;n++) { // Get our screen image
 while(!Serial1.available());
 convert.byte[1] = Serial1.read();
 while(!Serial1.available());
 convert.byte[0] = Serial1.read();
 pg1[n] = convert.word; // grab data as fast as we can!
 }
 
 
 delay(1);
 Serial1.write(ACKF,6); // ACK that we got the image
 
 // send data to the "window" on the Picadillo 35T
 tft.openWindow(96, 128, 128, 128);
 tft.windowData(pg1,16384);
 tft.closeWindow();

Systems’ Picadillo 35T uses the Digilent bootloader, plus the MPIDE/UECIDE IDE and libraries. What an awesome setup for users that don’t want to hunt down or Okay, that’s it for Mr. Roboto this month. Keep those emails coming to me at roboto@servomagazine (gasp!) have to write their own.