Is there any Sample Code ?- Grove - Serial Camera Kit

Archives GrovePi
1

Is there any documentation or sample code on how to use Grove - Serial Camera Kit? I am using Raspberry Pi and Grove Pi.

2

Hi,
GrovePi does not support the Grove Serial camera out of the box.
You have two options to make it work with GrovePi: 1) Add the code to control the camera in the Firmware for GrovePi 2)Directly connect the camera to the Raspberry Pi via the RPI-SERIAL port. The first option is the easier one and the second one would require you to Port the Grove Library (https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/Grove_Serial_Camera_Kit/blob/master/SerialCameral_DemoCode_CJ_OV528/SerialCameral_DemoCode_CJ_OV528.ino) to Raspberry Pi either in C or Python.

Since you are using the Raspberry Pi, is there a good reason for not using the Raspberry Pi camera. We have tried it with GrovePi and it works like a charm.

-Karan

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I ordered the camera with other sensors. No specific reason to use this and not to use Raspberry Pi camera.

Second Option requires rewriting code in C or Python.

Is there any info on how to add the code to control the camera in the firmware for GrovePi?

If it takes too much effort then I will order Raspberry Pi camera.

4

Adding the camera control in the firmware should be easy enough but if you look at the code that Seeed has provided for the Serial Camera https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/Grove_Serial_Camera_Kit , it uses a SD card to store the image most probably because the ATMEGA328 does not have enough memory to store the image.

Unless you have a Grove SD Card shield which you can connect to the GrovePi, I think that it would be a very big pain to set it up either on the GrovePi firmware or the on the Raspberry Pi.

From the looks of it, I would suggest you to leave it as such and hop on to the Raspberry Pi camera. The Grove Serial camera does not offer that good of a performance when compared to the Raspberry Pi camera and the Raspberry Pi does work very well with the RaspberryPi.

If you really want to try to get it to work without the SD card, then it could be an adventure on it’s own. The code looks very obscure and could be a pain to work with.

Sorry for all the troubles.

-Karan

5

Thanks for the guidance. I will use Raspberry Pi camera.

6

You might be better off using a camera board directly off the pi. Such as this one:
http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/collections/crusts-add-ons/products/camera-module

The board connects to the pi using the Camera Serial Interface (CSI) which has much more bandwidth and can take 2592x1944 images or 1080p video.

There are shell scripts:

There is a python library:

There is even a NoIR (No Infrared) camera which has its infrared filter removed for taking pictures in the dark without infrared lighting.
The PCB is black. Noir is French for Black. I see what they did here…
http://raspberrypiaustralia.com.au/collections/crusts-add-ons/products/raspberry-pi-camera-module-pi-noir

Although there are two similar looking connectors on the pi, only one of them supports a CSI camera. The other is a DSI port, for a display monitor. So you can only run one CSI camera per pi.