Patrick you can find a lot info there: http://wiki.elphel.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

i've pretty much read all that. it doesn't say anything about video-out or a computerless control module... so i guess that's a no....

the reason i asked is, if you still need a computer to control the camera, would there be any use for having onboard hard drives or CF?

Hello everyone,

I've been away for some weeks, but now I'm back and I'll try to find as much as time I can to 'dive' back into the Elphel 353 development.

Patrick, I don't think Andrey originally planned the 353 to be controlled from something else than a PC. As I remember, he told me it might be possible, but I guess he meant it for independent developers on this forum to build something themselves.
We also spoke about the hard drive module and I hope I will be given the opportunity to test it when it's ready. First of all, I'll start with the 353 itself.

10349 boards
 

I've got 3 working 10349 boards on hand and I'll send 2 of them to Switzerland on Monday - one will stay there and the other I would like to send to Oscar.
Currently out of the box it works with 1.8" HDD with zif-type (flex cable) connector - they say it is the same as in i-Pods. USB is also tested as well as rs-232.
Right now you still need computer to control the camera, but Swiss guys are trying to use USB-to-Blue Tooth adapter so cell phones could be eventually used to control the camera.

that's awesome news.

can the 1.8" drives cope with full quality MJPEG at 2058x1536 25fps ?
i did some rough calculations and it seems the MT9P001 can handle that.
I'm just worried about bandwidth limitations.

in the roadmap section of the wiki, the audio part is bare... but i found this http://wiki.elphel.com/index.php?title=PCM2903
are there still plans to implement audio?

also, if we can record directly to a hard drive and control the camera from a phone, what will we use to view the footage? video-out anyone?

cheers

Sounds familiar. Who are these Swiss guys, sounds interesting? You can fit an primitive video feed over BT, but that would need the camera to generate an low res preview feed. Sounds like an good scheme, any more information.

Forgot to add:
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13284
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13177

For $200 good display and Linux PC processing solution for Elphel, plus flash. It is an shame they did not include DVD+DTV and FPGA model for the port DVD market.

Wayne, do you really think the Eee will have enough power and bandwidth to store 24fps HD clips from the Elphel?

10 bits / chan?
 

Does this camera offer any cinema camera *must have* features, such as more bit depth than all of the consumer HD cams ?
Sorry to sound a bit brash, but other than using alternative codecs, I would really like to know if this project/thread is more than an excellent hardware and software project to tinker.
-Les

Yep, attaching hard drive or flash might be an negative, but if storage is in the camera, than all the Laptop has to do is use it's media processor to display the frames, and control the camera. When you look at it, PDA or phone could be sued, but then again hard to get something as good for the price of the PC. It is not an good solution, ergonomically, just cheap.

An good idea, would be any device that can be programmed to display and control with LCD and compatible IO, in an form factor that more suits camera use. Can anybody think of any, lie an media player?

Did anybody ever try out lossless grey scale compression of bayer on the 333?

No, the camera has only 8 bits/component in the output file format. On the other hand (we discussed it earlier - see http://www.elphel.com/actualbits.html) for many sensors 8 bit is enough provided you encode them non-linearly (as is possible with Elphel cameras - 5 MPix sensor has 12 bit ADC). You may just use appropriate gamma, it is possible to add custom "curves" as in the FPGA such processing is implemented using 256-element (per color) programmable tables with interpolation.

BTW - we restored raw Bayer encoding where in each 16x16 macroblock each of the 4 color components is grouped in individual 8x8 block before JPEG compression (parameter "j" - http://wiki.elphel.com/index.php?title=Ccam.cgi#opt)

A nokia N800 ? it's an "internet tablet" but with wifi only (so you need a ethernet>wifi adaptor, does that exist ?). I read about a guy controlling is Nikon with it for auto-bracketing without moving the camera (HDR shooting).

The screen resolution is quite nice (800x480) and it's running linux so you can hack it at will.

Lossless compression of 333 ? Do you mean in the fpga or just as a test on pc ?

Andrey, that's great news about the 10349 board. (also, interesting video of the Google tech talks)

Steven, I really like the development of the camera controlled by something like the Nokia n800.
Maybe it sounds strange, but don't forget that film cameras used to have optical viewfinders. If we forget the real time preview part, and leave that to an optical viewfinder, which i.m.o. still is the best way to focus and frame your shots.
This way you only need the 'camera controller' to show the actual exposure levels, white balance, gamma, contrast etc. Either show them as numbers or as simple graphics. If you know what you are doing, you know what the image would look like. You can also use some auto settings and hit something like 'hold' when you want to lock the settings at some point. It would be something like the left part in the Ajax interface, but even more simple.
Now lets really consider this, because the real time preview will always stay a problem and skipping it will also reduce the computing power of the camera controller.

The reason for 10 bit and digital viewfinders, is convenience and increased professionalism. With 8 bit you have to be more careful in filming, because there is less room to correct post, what only looked good during filming, or to enhance. With digital viewfinders it is easier to find focus thru res enhancement, cues, and exposure through zebra.

The camera would be used by an lot of people that are not high paid cinematographers that are good and experienced at picking them by eye.

I know all that of course. I just mean that real time preview would not be the first problem to look at. If you integrate the Elphel in a 35mm adapter it would be easy to build some optical viewfinder. The camera controller would be used as a enhanced exposure-meter and camera control.
If we have everything working, we can solve the preview than.