E-con Systems, a leading embedded design services company specialising in development of advanced camera solutions, has released a stereovision camera reference design. The design is based on Texas Instruments’ OMAP/DM37x family of processors and Gumstix Overo computer-on-module (COM) series. The stereo-camera reference design, named Capella, includes a DM3730-based Gumstix Overo WaterStorm COM, a Gumstix Tobi expansion board and e-con’s camera daughter board e-Cam9V024 Stereo.
Capella targets product companies keen to integrate stereovision in their product design. Application areas include machine vision, mobile robotics (obstacle detection), automotive applications, such as computer aided navigation and driver guidance, reconstructing 3D details of sculptures, monuments, or human faces, and 3D video recording and playback.
Capella runs Linux 2.6.35 and has Ethernet, an HDMI video port, USB OTG port, and a serial interface for a Linux console. The stereo-camera engine driver is V4L2 compatible and is available with an OpenCV interface patch allowing customers to develop applications based on plain V4L2 API or the OpenCV stack. The stereo engine driver exposes three V4L2 interfaces to the application developers to capture the left, right and combined left and right video streams. The SDK contains sample applications using both the V4L2 interface and also OpenCV stack.
The e-Cam 9V024 Stereo is powered by a pair of 1/3-inch global shutter monochrome Aptina CMOS image sensor MT9V024, with an active area of WVGA 752 x 480 (360,690 pixels). The sensor has the capability of delivering synchronous parallel 736 x 480 monochrome video of 8-bpp greyscale images at 30fps.The cameras come with pre-aligned and pre-calibrated M12 lenses on an S-mount lens holder. The two cameras are separated by a distance of 100mm (the baseline). This baseline allows accurate measurement to a depth of 3 metres.
