Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Accessing a camera for your project
Now that you have established connection via a LAN connection, the second capability
you'll need is to access a camera to see where you are going. One of the most significant
questions is whether or not connecting a camera to Arduino will work in this application.
There are several cameras that can be accessed either through a standard UART RX/TX or
I2C interface. The following is an image of one such unit, available from RadioShack:
There are two ways to connect the camera. The first is through a UART interface, the oth-
er is through an I2C interface. Connecting the camera and getting it to write the images to
the SD card interface is a bit daunting, but there is an example sketch available at
www.radioshack.com
.
There is also a tutorial that looks promising at
ht-
tp://makezine.com/projects/crittergram-capture-cam/
.
Be forewarned that getting this to
work is not easy; there is a significant amount of configuration required.
You will also find that the refresh rate on any Arduino-based camera system will be mar-
ginal at best. The challenge is that there is no high-speed bus between the camera and Ar-
duino, and you'll be saving the pictures on the SD card for later transmission.
For this application, I chose a different solution: I purchased an IP camera that I could
connect to the LAN cable. The following is an image of the unit:
