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Hardware

Embedded Linux On a High Speed Camera 91

Posted by timothy from the cool-hardware dept.
destructor writes: "Linuxdevices has an interesting article on a High Speed Gated Intensified Camera that "combines a fast gated micro-channel plate (MCP) image intensifier, a CMOS image sensor, and an embedded computer based on an Axis Communications ETRAX RISC processor running Embedded Linux." The camera (Elphel Model 303) itself is network operable and can be used for capturing images of explosions, lightning bolts, etc. Link found via. megarad.com."
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Embedded Linux On a High Speed Camera More

Embedded Linux On a High Speed Camera

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  • Wouldnt mind using this to make my own home-brewed Matrix movies..

    Kid jumping off roof with blankie thinking he's going to be ok.. you get to get every angle of that by running around him with the camera :-)

    Would be nice to be able to take a lot of shots ( and I mean helluva lot of shots ) of meteor showers then you'd have a pretty good chance of grabbing a good shot..
  • can it catch a glimse of a speeding CowboyNeal running around after he gets the most votes on the "Which brand of lightbulb do you prefer?" Slashdot Poll?

  • Too limited! (Score:3, Funny)

    by QuickFox ( 311231 ) on Friday January 11, 2002 @01:55AM (#2822004)
    The camera [...] can be used for capturing images of explosions, lightning bolts, etc.

    Wouldn't it be better to make a camera that can be used for ordinary pictures?

    Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.

  • Actually useful! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by madenosine ( 199677 )
    At first sight, I thought running Linux on a camera would be useless, but it actually DOES have some great uses; mainly high quality, low budget films, in which a low budget movie can produce effects like those in The Matrix, for a fraction of the cost. IMO, small, abstract markets like this might be more important to the future of Linux than things like Linux on PDAs.

  • Blinded Me with Science (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday January 11, 2002 @02:01AM (#2822020) Journal
    As usual, Linux/unix/*nix/etc are found where important research are found. This is very encouraging for the future.

    Just for the educational point:

    What is a "gated intensified camera"?

    This term refers to a class of ultra-fast cameras, with exposure times in the nanosecond range. "Intensified" comes from image intensifiers -- vacuum tubes similar to those for the nigh-vision devices. "Gated" means those tubes (in contrast to night-vision applications) are used as shutters by applying fast electrical pulses to the control electrodes.

    The neat thing is that the camera is operating as a webserver:

    I have always disliked trying to find out why my company's systems were not working our customers' sites -- had my hardware really failed, or had they just updated some (seemingly unrelated) software on their computers which were running a popular OS? - - - This last issue unambiguously told me the camera should run a web server. Internet technologies are the best de-facto "common denominator" for the different computers and operating systems.

    The world's fastest webcam! amazing! ;-)

    • "Intensified" comes from image intensifiers -- vacuum tubes similar to those for the nigh-vision devices.

      Actually, the blurb mentions it uses a microchannel plate. In a standard photo-multiplier tube, a photon hits the cathode plate of a "tube", kicking out an electron, which is then accelerated towards the anode. Here they can be used to generate an electrical signal, or more commonly knock out even more electrons to be accelerated towards and even more positively charged anode for a stronger signal, and so on. These "tubes" are carefully arranged in a (kind of) circular array to make sure as many of the accelerated electrons hit the next anode.

      A microchannel plate works in essentially the same way, except that the initial photoelectrons are accelerated down narrow tubes instead of a series of anodes. As the electrons collide with the walls of the tubes, they knock more electrons free, these collide again, etc. Also, using narrow tubes like this preserves the spatial resolution of the original photoelectrons - light hitting a small region of the detector produces photoelectrons in only that area and the signal is amplified by only a few of these tubes, producing a final signal in that one spot at the other end of the MCP.
  • Catch the speed at which this site is going to be slashdotted?
  • Imagine all the uses if we had a modular pattern recognition framework that can analyze pictures taken with this thing. One would only need to write a module that recognizes a specific thing to be able to have that information usable in any application.

    For example, if I had the ability to extract all facial images captured by the camera I could feed them to something like this [slashdot.org].

    Of course there are big issues about privacy and whatnot with that kind of application, but I'm not going to touch that here. There are plenty of other, non-privacy intruding uses for an automated image analyzation system.
    • This would be great for an industrial shop floor QA system. It could take the picture and then analyze the photo for measurements and then check each and every part, as they fly across the line. I know systems that do this exist, but most of those use lasers and are much more expensive.
      • Ermmm... this sort of application of photography is actually already pretty widespread in industrial embedded systems, and while lasers are fairly commonly used, so are other optical systems too - depending on the relative wavelengths needed for exposure for optimal use of the CCD, etc.

        A lot of DSP stuff was designed with these sorts of algorithms in mind.

        The chips in the PC you're using to read this post probably had to fit within the bounds of a line convolution function at least a few thousand times before it was put in plastic to be sent to you ...

        I wouldn't be so hasty to presume that this stuff is really that expensive.

        Just esoteric.

      • Here at UPS we've got a small-package sorting system (project: Bullfrog), and the DCOR (Digital Camera Optical Readers) that acquires all package-tracking data from the shipping labels runs on embedded Linux. Of course, that's all that's running on Linux at the hub/center level...except for my rogue Red Hat box.

  • High Speed Photography (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oldzoot ( 60984 ) <morton.james@comc[ ].net ['ast' in gap]> on Friday January 11, 2002 @02:30AM (#2822092)
    High speed photography is a usefull tool for studying physical phenomena. If using a linux system lowers the cost and increases the availability of a usefull tool, that is a good thing. There are already lots of digital cameras which can take "ordinary" photographs, and there is increasing linux support for those also ( gphoto and gimp for example ). I think that any time an open source tool makes a genuine contribution to society, science or the advancement of ducks, it is a good thing. One concern however is that high speed cameras were initially developed in support of the development of nuclear weapons. Will this tool enhance the proliferation of such devices ?
  • So can I server PHP/MySQL webpages with Apache on this camera?

  • I worry. (Score:3, Funny)

    by xxSOUL_EATERxx ( 549142 ) on Friday January 11, 2002 @03:42AM (#2822217)
    This camera is unquestionably an exciting use of embedded Linux. Few things rival the coolness factor of a panoramic lightning storm color photo spread. But I worry.

    ...what's next?

    I think back to the film Real Genius probably the high point of Val Kilmer's acting career. In the film, the character of Hollyfield, a madman who lives in a closet, is described as "a gifted scientist, until he found out the government was using one of his inventions to kill people " (emphasis mine).

    With that thought, the chilling possibility arises: if Linux can be used for good, like in cameras, how long before it is used for evil? How will Slashdot report on the first embedded-linux-using guided atomic bomb?This is something the needs to be seriously considered now. The Linux community cannot afford to wait until embedded Linux is used in torture devices by some fascist regime before confronting the possibilities of using Linux for evil.

    A "Linux Bill of Rights" should be drawn up, roundly condemning the use of Linux for destructive, sexist, racist, or environmentally degrading practices. So much progress has been made through Linux. This great OS, the product of strong, free geeks, must not be allowed to become a tool for evil. The voices of the Linux community must be heard: rememer the lesson of Real Genius!

    • This is actually one of the deep philosophical points about free software. Namely, that software should be unrestricted in use, be it good or evil, commercial or educational, legal or illegal. Software is a tool just like a car is a tool. You don't have to sign an agreement when you buy a car to only use it on Microsoft(c) paved roads.
  • Before you know it you'll find out that your camera has been infected with a virus that has posted all your nude and private pictures all over the Internet.

    Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.
    • Before you know it you'll find out that your camera has been infected with a virus that has posted all your nude and private pictures all over the Internet.

      Even worse...
      The camera sends all of your nude and private pictures to a pay for entry website and labels them "Trailer Trash Exposed". Which then will get a video expose made of them and sold on FAUX NETWORK as "Girls Gone Wild for Trailer Trash Exposed". Which then is made into a police drama for the ever-moronic FAUX NEWS views called "World's Scariest Police Chases of Girls Gone Wild for Trailer Trash Exposed". Which will become so popular with the knuckle-dragging folks that a sequel titled "Leisure Suit Larry's Filming Dumb Sluts while World's Scariest Police chase Girls Gone Wild for Trailer Trash Exposed" and sold during Bill O'Reilly's "All Spin Zone".

      Thusly leaving the American public so feebleminded to sit idle as their country is driven full-steam into a full-out depression while the unelected crook snorts another line of cocaine. Meanwhile the sleaze in ENRON bails and flees to other countries. Christian Reconstructionist John Ashcroft is then driven into a personal punishment dilemma over whether he should be frantically masturbating or offended that even his low levels of intellectual titillation have finally been met. Sad how our great nation has fallen to such blatent crooks and conmen and how horribly silent the voting public has been to the treasonous coup.
  • I can't say I know about this product intimately, but my experience is that these products start at about USD 15000 and go up to about USD 50000. With these kind of prices, nobody cares about an operating system which costs USD 1000.

    As a side point, The camera seems to have no external trigger, and be only network triggerable. If you're taking 10ns frames, this is not going to be useful.

    On the other hand, the integration of the frame grabber gets around the problem of many cameras (especially pulnix) in that the camera needs a lot of fiddling before it works with a third party framegrabber.
    • Sorry, I probably hit the wrong button and was called "Anonymous Coward"
      1. Price for a module as shown on a data sheet is $5000-$7000, depending on the MCP quality. The least expensive I've seen was $1300, decent one $2500
      Next most expensive component - fiberoptic taper ~$500
      2. The most important for me with Linux was not that I did not need to pay for it but I was *free* to modify it and the applications.
      3. External trigger - see schematics at http://www.elphel.com/3fhlo/index.html
      • Thanks for the prices, clearly it's a lot cheaper than some of the systems I've been looking at for our lab, maybe in part due to the lack of precision triggering features I talked about in the main post.

        The point I was trying to make is that for most people buying a camera of this sort, they want to buy a finished system. I certainally don't have the time to fiddle to make a system work. I don't want to modify the operating system. And that's easily worth USD 1000 to me. The old argument as to whether a free operating system is cheaper.

        In part also the people owning this camera already own something capable of creating bright light bursts down to 10ns (high speed photography is always flash photography) and so are not short of money in order to make their expensive system work.
    • but my experience is that these products start at about USD 15000 and go up to about USD 50000. With these kind of prices, nobody cares about an operating system which costs USD 1000.

      Maybe you've got money to burn, but I think most people would like a discount of between 2 and 7% on a reasonably large transation. $1000 is, well, $1000 whichever way you look at it.

      A fool and his money...
      • As far as an embedded applications engineer is concerned (that's me!), linux is often a very easy environment to put things like webservers on, and there are several ports of the kernel that deliver real-time responsiveness. Custom hardware is easy to integrate into the kernel, and source being available helps hunt down problems.

        As far as it being $$$ free, it doesn't cost that much less than anything else. $1000 is about the cost of one engineer working one day. uC/OS-ii (a cheap OS for micros, free for non-commercial use) costs $2500 for one application (that means no royalties per product). Its the facilities and the active developer community that makes linux valuable, not the lack of a licensing price tag.
  • ...combines a fast gated micro-channel plate (MCP)...

    And if it gets out of hand, only Tron can save us!
    --G
  • What happens when the home directory and NIS server goes down and I'm doing 85mph on the highway? ;)
  • ... I can see those ad's coming up already ... "hidden meteor shower cam!"... double as good, double snappy!

  • Cool. See through haze, silt (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Friday January 11, 2002 @01:55PM (#2824719) Homepage
    Neat. In addition to the obvious high-speed photography applications, a system like this coupled with a similarly short duration flash system could make a vision system capable of seeing through some kinds of particle clouds. Might be more applicable underwater, where the particles are bigger.

    Basically, the problem in low-visibility situations like that is that the particles near you scatter so much of your light back at you that you can't see the stuff further away. If you send out a 10 ns pulse of light and don't open the shutter until it has had time to go out some distance (say 100 ns for 100 feet, divided by whatever the refractive index of water is), then you only see the light that has bounced off whatever is 100 feet away (well, mod multiple reflections from silt particles).

    Won't work in really thick clouds, of course, but it has possibilities. (Consider, for example, driving in a snowstorm at night -- you don't need or want the snow immediately in front of the headlights lit up.)
  • What was the IP of the door web cam again? ticka,ticka,ticka... Oh there is is. Hmm.. Ok, I know him. Oh CRAP.. now what was the *&^&#$^$ IP address of the door lock?

  • There are actually quite a few [iapplianceweb.com] network cameras available if you don't need a high-speed camera. Most have a built-in webserver, and several run a version of embedded linux. My personal favorite (and Ed's [edcheung.com]) is the Panasonic KX-HCM10 [panasonic.com] which can be had for as low as $329.99 [panwebi.com]. The Axis [axis.com] and Samsung [webthru.net] cameras are pretty cool too, if you can afford them.

    Other cameras include the StarDot NetCam [wincam.com], which is also available from ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com] (along with the Axis 2100 [thinkgeek.com] and 2120 [thinkgeek.com] cameras) and the IQeye cameras [visiqn.com].

    The real advantage to these is that you can simply plug them into your network and watch [whatever] through your web browser. My interest stems from my upcoming need to be able to work and keep an eye on a baby sleeping at the same time. There are, of course, baby monitors that come with little TV's or that plug into your television, and the annoying X10 cameras, but they all require a separate monitor and need extra gear to be viewed in more than one location. With a network camera, not only can we watch the kid from any computer in the house, but relatives can watch too, over the internet. And all I need to do to set it up is plug it in and set the IP address.

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