I am working on a project that involves inputing data from 3-6 machine vision cameras (6 monochrome or 3 color) performing some basic image processing on the streams from the cameras and then saving data out to storage. The cameras need to operate with video frame rates. I was just wondering if I could get some suggestions on if this is even possible with FPGA, or what kind of hardware could be used to accomplish this. Thanks for any help!

yes, FPGAs like video. Altera has a collection of IP cores called the Video and Image Processing Suite which contains some broadcast oriented cores (scaling, de-interlacing) and there are also some 3rd party cores designed for wide dynamic range image sensors depending on your requirements, you might be OK with the low cost Cyclone IV E or GX family. you will also want to think about external memory interfaces (DDR2)

Thanks for your reply. The operations I would be performing are actually fairly simple. I just need to to a matrix multiplication of the data and a scaling. And so it is possible to have multiple video streams going to one FPGA for processing?

What is the digital format of the camera outputs, e.g. USB, GigE, CameraLink...

I haven't actually picked out the cameras yet, but the ones I am looking at are either GigE, Firewire 800, or CameraLink.

gj is right, you definitely want to look at a camera with an FPGA friendly interface. i don't think Firewire is a good idea, GigE or CameraLink might be

Camera Design | Altera Community

14 Replies

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
He did specify a scaling. Depending on what kind of scaling can mean buffering is required - eg. if its camerlink to PAL or NTSC - a standard conversion.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
Yes. I took scaling to mean a gain factor, not a format conversion.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
Yes, scaling does mean just a gain factor. Would buffering be required, or could I just pass the data straight in and do the processing, which would be a matrix operation on each pixel using all 6 streams?

Also, Figuring out where the data will go after processing is another issue I need to figure out. I basically just want to send it off to some storage medium, but because the data will all be combined at that point into a spectral estimation, which means it will have up to 30 channels/pixel, the final output will be rather large, looking at up to 1 GB/s of data. What would you guys suggest for a final storage medium?

Thanks again for all your help with this.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years ago
Yes, the matrix operation and gain can easily be done on live video with little buffering (you'll need a few line delays, but thats fairly straightforward internal to the FPGA).

As for output - thats a lot of data. How about Gigabit Ethernet? or PCIe?

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Camera Design

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