Usable FPGA board

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 I'm pretty new to this forum. Currently working on a engineering project and need some advice on this stuff.  I'm looking to buy a low end FPGA board for image processing. The FPGA needs to receive video (or steady stream of images) and process it. Heard it was possible, but want to make sure from you guys.  I'll appreciate any input/advice you have on the subject.  Thanks in advance.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---   The FPGA needs to receive video (or steady stream of images) and process it.   --- Quote End ---    Receive video over what interface?  Check out the Terasic boards and their adapters. They have HDMI boards that might be usable with one of their lower-end kits ...  http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?language=english&categoryno=13&list=simple  http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?language=english&categoryno=65  Cheers, Dave

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Dave, 

 Thanks for the reply.   I think the cheapest camera to make due with is a Webcam, thus an USB / USB2.0 interface.  Otherwise, I think a low cost IP camera will also work, thus an Ethernet connection.  The idea that I have is to connect a camera to this FPGA and do image processing as the images stream to the FPGA. I'd also like to get an idea what the cheapest FPGA is that I can make this happen with.  The type of processing I'd like to do with the images is in the line of distance an direction calculations from images.  Regards Pw

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---   I think the cheapest camera to make due with is a Webcam, thus an USB / USB2.0 interface.    --- Quote End ---    The Terasic DE2 series have a full-speed USB OTG controller, its an NXP ISP1362. You could boot Linux on the DE2-115, configure the ISP1362 to stream data from a USB camera to an Avalon-MM slave, and process images in your custom logic.  If your camera uses Ethernet, then you would still probably need Linux so that you can leverage the TCP/IP stack, and stream data again to your custom Avalon-MM slave.  I think the DE2-70 and DE2-115 have enough logic and memory to run Linux.  Cheers, Dave

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Dave, 

 Sorry for taking so long to reply. I had some trouble this last week with some other aspects of my project.  Im not entirely that clued up with all this FPGA stuff. (only worked with a development board once, and did some coding on it). Does your suggestion come down to this interface?:   https://www.alteraforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=5737   That would be a problem, because I have to design a mobile hand-held system for doing the image processing. A DE-115 board would be far too big

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---   Does your suggestion come down to this interface?:    --- Quote End ---    Not quite, it would be more like:  

1. ISP1362 connects to the webcam via USB 
2. Control logic in the FPGA streams data from the webcam to your image processing logic (a NIOS processor could work for this task) 
3. Your processed images would then be written to RAM or to whatever display you decide to use. 

   --- Quote Start ---   That would be a problem, because I have to design a mobile hand-held system for doing the image processing. A DE-115 board would be far too big  --- Quote End ---    Ignore that requirement for now. You have to get something working first. How can you design the final board without knowing how big an FPGA you need? You're better off to start big, get the system working, and then work on optimization for your final product.  Cheers, Dave