THE MAGAZINE FOR COMPUTER APPLICATIONS
Circuit Cellar Online offers articles illustrating creative solutions
and unique applications through complete projects, practical
tutorials, and useful design techniques.

LOOK MA, NO PC!

A $55 Webcam
by Steve Freyder, David Helland, & Bruce LIghtner

Start • Hardware Design • Picking a Camera • Cheap CMOS Cameras • PicoWeb Server Hardware • Firmware Functions • Software Design • PicoWeb Firmware • Java Applet • Smile • Source and PDF

Smile

We have established that our PicoWebCam can be constructed for as little as $55 by first building our $25 web server and then connecting it to a Nick Click digital camera. Not surprisingly, we think that for a few dollars more, the commercial version of the PicoWeb server is a better way to go. In either case, you get a complete, inexpensive, standalone web server with attached web camera, all in a tiny package. And the best part is no PC is required!

Clearly, the resolution of the toy cameras we used in the project is less than optimal for many applications. However, there are cost-sensitive commercial applications that could benefit from this project (e.g., a keypad entry system that records photos of all entry attempts).

The fact that the camera takes more than 4 s to send its image data out its serial port means that the frame rate of our PicoWebCam is horrible. However, it doesnıt take a propeller head to note that the serial port bottleneck can be removed from the picture (no pun intended). In fact, just like Mattel, you too can buy CMOS imaging chips from STMicroelectronics (STM), and for a whole lot less than $29 each. All of STMıs imaging chips that we looked at have a high-speed parallel interface, and evaluation boards sporting even higher resolution imaging chips are available from STM.

How about a PicoWebCam that delivers photos at the speed of the Ethernet! Itıs all possible, and now youıve got all the information you need to roll your own.

PREVIOUS • NEXT