thoughts about image processing

[TimCraig]

Originally Posted by 3dude_2231

Tim, you said that the CMUCAMs aren't so great for a starting point,
but you didn't mention what would be, is a standard webcam better?

Yes, a webcam with a desktop or laptop would be a better setup to learn actual image processing. The development and debugging cycle would be some much faster and simpler than using a small system where you have to continually develop on a bigger computer anyhow, download it to the target, and have very limited debugging capability. Not to mention the limited memory and processing power. Image processing can be very memory and compute intensive and for the educational part you probably don't want to skimp on either. Once you learn, then you can port it to a small system.

Originally Posted by 3dude_2231

I was thinking more in the sense of using the cam with a smaller controller,
(such as a large PIC), if that's my larger objective, where should I start?

One alternative to the CMUCam that I know of for small systems is the AVRCam. It's inexpensive and you can play with its programming. I believe it uses the same camera module that the CMUCam uses so you could potentially save that cost as well but you need to verify that. The toolset to program it is free as well. A lot of the people in the Silicon Valley Homebrew Robotics Club use AVR instead of PIC for their bot controllers.

http://www.jrobot.net/Projects/AVRcam.html