RPi use cases explained

John Alexander wrote:

 

Each camera has it's own set up which is really where it becomes a true pain.

 

Other than that the closed source GPU is quite the pain more so than the camera really since it controlls so many other subsystems

The problem here, of course, being that the driver for the camera is in the GPU. So even if you have all the info on the camera there's nothing you can do with it.

I've been following the section of the RPF forums on the camera and some people seem to have obtained most, if not all, of the relevant info on the camera and who are coming up with questions detailed enough to have stumped the broadcom employees working on the camera...

Combined with people who appear to have a lot more photographic knowledge than the software people it's made for some interesting reading.

Selsinork, how are they dealing with the fact that the sensor is so much smaller than that for secuity cameras.

do you just need to put up with the  fact your sensor covers only a fraction of the expected area?

At best it played to the SoC's strengths by providing a camera interface with more bandwidth than the Pi's heavily shared USB can provide, but it offered nothing fundamental that can't be done in other ways, and adding those connectors didn't help keep the cost down nor contribute towards the skills level of undergraduate applicants.

It's consistent with everything else about Pi, lots of directions and stakeholders.  I don't think that people looking for a clear statement of requirements followed by a corresponding clear effort in that direction (or even directions) will find it.  Pi didn't happen that way, and after nearly a year and a half of watching RPF's efforts, it's easy to see that their main investment hasn't been towards the much discussed and over-hyped educational goals.

I think it was coder27 who said that their main concern seems to have been to sell a lot of boards.  Well we know that they have, but ignoring the benefit of hindsight, it's also clear that they have put a large amount of effort into media support and expansion modules, so "selling product" must indeed rank near the top of their own list of goals.

Along a rather different tack ...

If the main aim were charitable support of education, the price of Pi would have dropped by now anyway.  Their BOM cost now is just a fraction of what it was in the days of 10k-30k volume costing, so if they wished to lower the barrier further, I bet they could, and very easily.   (Farnell and RS are likely to be making nice profits on accessories anyway.)

John Alexander wrote:

 

Selsinork, how are they dealing with the fact that the sensor is so much smaller than that for secuity cameras.

do you just need to put up with the  fact your sensor covers only a fraction of the expected area?

Two thoughts, the camera will stream 1920x1080, so the horizontal field of view is quite good, or you just add a fisheye style lens intended for a mobile phone to widen the angle.

The simple fact that it's around 50 quid for something that can do 5M pixel stills (or low fps mjpeg) or ~2Mp 30fps streaming compared to probably 200-300 for a 1.3Mp is going to make it worthwhile exploring. Example http://www.camsecure.co.uk/HDWebcam720P.html  of one that has a similarly capable camera, so with that sort of price difference you can be sure it's going to be done...

There are several recipies for getting it working with motion or zoneminder on the RPF forum.

I expect security cameras weren't something that was ever thought about, but there's a community out here who will think up all manner of uses

selsinork wrote:

 

I expect security cameras weren't something that was ever thought about, but there's a community out here who will think up all manner of uses

Oh I think it was planned from the start, as the glowing LAN9512 chip can keep the lens demisted.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

the price of Pi would have dropped by now anyway.  Their BOM cost now is just a fraction of what it was in the days of 10k-30k volume costing, so if they wished to lower the barrier further, I bet they could, and very easily.

I suspect that bringing manufacturing back to the UK hass offset that somewhat, but I agree.  If they'd somehow limited it to education and excluded the makers and xbmc folks they wouldn't have had the sort of volume pricing though...

I suspect that nobody would argue much if they simply said that the price stays the same for everyone else and that they'd use that to give education a nice discount, it'd at least go some way to showing a bit more conviction on the educational side.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Oh I think it was planned from the start, as the glowing LAN9512 chip can keep the lens demisted.

I wonder how good a source of infra-red illumination it would be

selsinork wrote:

 

I wonder how good a source of infra-red illumination it would be

Now that's proper lateral engineering thinking!

Only slightly non-serious question, but did the 'Will It Blend' people ever actually blend one ?  The answer in the RPF FAQ lacks a link to the video