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Solid State Video Recording Device

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David Harper

Jan 1, 1970
0
Is anyone aware of a solid state video recording device (chip?) that
will record analog video input and is easily configured and
controlled? Digital cameras with this capability are nice, but won't
cut it for this application. It needs to accept video from an
external source and have 2 minutes of record time or more.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
Dave
 
I

Ian Stirling

Jan 1, 1970
0
David Harper said:
Is anyone aware of a solid state video recording device (chip?) that
will record analog video input and is easily configured and
controlled? Digital cameras with this capability are nice, but won't
cut it for this application. It needs to accept video from an
external source and have 2 minutes of record time or more.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Are you looking for b+w security camera, or broadcast quality?
There isn't going to be a single chip that will do this, it'll be at
least several, or a module.
Do you want it to store the video without power?
One or ten thousand?
A laptop with a compactflash drive replacing the main disk, would be
one way.
Maybe not what you want though.
 
R

Rene Tschaggelar

Jan 1, 1970
0
David said:
Is anyone aware of a solid state video recording device (chip?) that
will record analog video input and is easily configured and
controlled? Digital cameras with this capability are nice, but won't
cut it for this application. It needs to accept video from an
external source and have 2 minutes of record time or more.

The last time I had a look at uncompressed Video, was when
30 seconds used 2GBytes. Therefore I assume you'd choose
compressed video. I recently saw a TV/Video grabber device
with MPEG2 for 150$ or so. It was with a USB2 interface.
So a PC with a Flashdrive and some sensible OS should do it.
Unfortunately MS Window does a fair amount of writing some
state information and therefore is not Flash-able. But
perhaps a Win XP embedded or a realtime Linux.

Rene
 
R

Roger Hamlett

Jan 1, 1970
0
David Harper said:
Is anyone aware of a solid state video recording device (chip?) that
will record analog video input and is easily configured and
controlled? Digital cameras with this capability are nice, but won't
cut it for this application. It needs to accept video from an
external source and have 2 minutes of record time or more.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
Dave
I think the answer is 'no way'...
What you want can easily be done digitally, and if the sample rate is well
over that required for the analog bandwidth, and the output has good
filtration, there is no reason not to go digital. All the solutions so far
mentioned are digital, and there are some chips around, that will grab,
digitise to a data stream, and compress, in only a couple of chips. Add a
suitable memory device, and a chip to reconstruct the data, and you have
the simplest solution. A chip like the SAA5284, might be the starting
point for the acquisition circuit.
The problem with analog, is that storage devices to store analog data, and
allow it to be clocked out, are either not solid state (tape etc.), or are
non static (devices like the bucket-brigade delay line). In either case,
the amount of data involved, even assuming quite low quality, involves a
lot of parts...

Best Wishes
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi David,

A while ago a company called Coatue wanted to develop this technology,
or at least the memory chips that enable it. But as far as I remember it
got sold at least once and I don't know what became of it. Might be
worth a Google search though.

Regards, Joerg
 
D

David Harper

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ian Stirling said:
Are you looking for b+w security camera, or broadcast quality?

Hopefully high quality. Not like DTV quality, but more than a
security camera. This will be used on a high altitude application.
There isn't going to be a single chip that will do this, it'll be at
least several, or a module.

A module is cool too.
Do you want it to store the video without power?

Power can be provided in this application.
One or ten thousand?

You mean pricewise? How about one hundred? :) JK, but the cheaper
the better.
A laptop with a compactflash drive replacing the main disk, would be
one way.
Maybe not what you want though.

That might be a viable option, but it'd have to be a lightweight
single board computer, not a labtop. Since it's a high altitude
application, ideally I'd like to get it under the 1 lb range.

Does this bring any items into mind?

Thanks for the response!

Dave
 
D

David Harper

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rene Tschaggelar said:
The last time I had a look at uncompressed Video, was when
30 seconds used 2GBytes. Therefore I assume you'd choose
compressed video. I recently saw a TV/Video grabber device
with MPEG2 for 150$ or so. It was with a USB2 interface.
So a PC with a Flashdrive and some sensible OS should do it.
Unfortunately MS Window does a fair amount of writing some
state information and therefore is not Flash-able. But
perhaps a Win XP embedded or a realtime Linux.

Rene

Did you mean something like this?

http://www.usbgear.com/USB-Video-Capture.html

That might be an option.

Thanks!
Dave
 
D

David Harper

Jan 1, 1970
0
Roger Hamlett said:
I think the answer is 'no way'...
What you want can easily be done digitally, and if the sample rate is well
over that required for the analog bandwidth, and the output has good
filtration, there is no reason not to go digital.

I may have been unclear, but my only requirement is that it needed to
accept an analog 'input'. I was looking for a digital storage
solution.
All the solutions so far
mentioned are digital, and there are some chips around, that will grab,
digitise to a data stream, and compress, in only a couple of chips. Add a
suitable memory device, and a chip to reconstruct the data, and you have
the simplest solution. A chip like the SAA5284, might be the starting
point for the acquisition circuit.
The problem with analog, is that storage devices to store analog data, and
allow it to be clocked out, are either not solid state (tape etc.), or are
non static (devices like the bucket-brigade delay line). In either case,
the amount of data involved, even assuming quite low quality, involves a
lot of parts...

Best Wishes


Thanks for the help. I'll check out the SAA5284.

Dave
 
I

Ian Stirling

Jan 1, 1970
0
David Harper said:
Hopefully high quality. Not like DTV quality, but more than a
security camera. This will be used on a high altitude application.


A module is cool too.


Power can be provided in this application.


You mean pricewise? How about one hundred? :) JK, but the cheaper
the better.

I was actually meaning one item, or ten thousand.
If it's ten thousand, then designing one specially is an option, and
getting to 100g is going to be almost trivial.
If it's one, then you want something that'll just slot together, and
it's going to be substantially harder.
That might be a viable option, but it'd have to be a lightweight
single board computer, not a labtop. Since it's a high altitude
application, ideally I'd like to get it under the 1 lb range.

Does this bring any items into mind?

Motherboards of laptops, minus the screen/keyboard/... in a polysytene/carbon
case might get you to 2lb, 1lb is going to be harder.

Few "single board" computers have the ability to digitise video.
You may also want to consider a conventional micro-mini camcorder,
in a sealed air-tight case, which could almost hit your weight limit.
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi David,

A while ago a company called Coatue wanted to develop this technology,
or at least the memory chips that enable it. But as far as I remember it
got sold at least once and I don't know what became of it. Might be
worth a Google search though.
ISTR reading something not too long ago, mentioned in one of these NGs,
about some unbelievable memory that was something like a crystal and two
lasers, and one chip stored some ridiculous amount, like gigabytes. Or
was that a gag, or was I hallucinating?

Thanks,
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
I may have been unclear, but my only requirement is that it needed to
accept an analog 'input'. I was looking for a digital storage
solution.
So all you really need is a video ADC and some bulk memory. That's
almost trivial. I'd even surmise someone here could come up with an
FPGA to do compression in one chip. So you've got one, maybe two
chips for input (buffer(opt) and ADC), possibly one for compression,
one for timing, and as much memory as you can afford.

Nothin' to it!

Cheers!
Rich
 
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