Thursday 3 September 2020

Technical Note: 300FPS Video Recording/Streaming System

Our teammates at DAVE Embedded Systems have been working hard on new applications and prototypes during lockdown. They are always striving to improve their skills and knowledge around video manipulation and camera design including Machine Learning features on their products.

This particular Technical Note illustrates a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) that DAVE Embedded Systems engineered for a customer operating in the industrial automation market. The goal was to build a prototype of a high-frame-rate video recording/streaming system.

In a typical scenario, illustrated in the following diagram, this device would be used in fast automatic manufacturing lines for two purposes:
  • Remote monitoring
  • Detailed off-line "post-mortem" failure analysis.




In essence, the system consists of a high-frame-rate image sensor interfaced to a Linux-based embedded platform also denoted as PP in the rest of the document. The sensor frames a specific area of the production line and sends a constant-rate flow of frames to the PP for further processing, as detailed in the following sections.

Resolution and frame rate of this stream have to be carefully determined in function of the characteristics of the scene to shoot, first and foremost the speed of moving objects framed by the sensor and its lens. In the case under discussion, the customer specified a resolution of 1280x720, a frame rate of 300 fps, and the use of a global shutter. 

Read the full Technical Note here.