New 4k 60fps 3D miniature camera - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 09:28:25 pm
content: Hello.I am designing the housing for a small 3D camera with 4k 60fps capability.To make a realistic design I need to know what goes into a video camera so that my design allows for all the internals.To make a 3D camera one way is to have two synchronised cameras. Then one would need:LensesImaging chips (ccd vs cmos?)one or two processorsa power source e.g. a battery (battery vs capacitor)Memory chip or chips (micro sdxc cards).microphonesvideo out connector (hdmi vs usb. Must be able to transfer data in real time.)power connector/charger connectorwifi chip?flex pcb for compact designI have looked at a few teardowns, but I am not an engineer, so any help would be most welcome.I see some 3d cameras basically are two separate cameras that have been synchronised. I guess this is the route I will choose because processing power is too low to handle the data from both imaging sensors in current small chips. (or is it?)

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 10:07:41 pm
content: First I would suggest: Find out what you don't know.You have a long way to go, probably several years minimum at building up to the level where you could design something like this.Your drive to build something cool is ultimately what will keep you learning. And you'll need it, because the going can get very difficult. Good luck

author: holozip
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 10:23:30 pm
content: Perhaps one of the market leaders in small very capable cameras is GoPro. Their new GoPro black edition can shoot 4K, and if they work much like their predecessors should be able to be linked together for capturing 3D.I don't think they're up to shooting full 4K at 60fps in 3D though... what you're talking about designing and building would be better than anything else in its class thus far; and quite a task.Maybe a good place to start would be to tear down a new GoPro and see what makes it tick? Understanding what processor, CCD, and various other bits of hardware in use would be good learning.A step down from there, and still a long way from your goal is a RasperryPi with a camera module - this would be much more open and easier to hack together, cheap, and would also give you a good grounding in what would be involved in interfacing a camera module to some useful electronics.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 10:31:57 pm
content: If you have to ask those sorts of questions, you have zero chance of making it happen.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 10:48:47 pm
content: A for enthusiasm!, but I echo the others. If you have to ask these questions, then it is unlikely you'll be able to pull this off.This is a very serious project for an experienced designer with knowledge in the camera field, let alone someone without either.Yes, I also suggest taking apart a 4K GoPro yourself and seeing what makes it tick. If you don't understand what every part in there does and why, as a starter, then you'll have zero chance I'm afraid.As a starter you would be wise to hack two existing cameras into a 3D camera as a demo to find out all the in's and out's. Once you have such a working system, only then would you think about designing anything from scratch yourself.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 10:54:44 pm
content: No chance indeed as you say.My plan is not to learn all the ins and outs of electrical engineering. I will have someone else do the hard core engineering bits. I just need to know how small of a frame I can fit the necessary components into.I am looking at gopro tear downs as you suggest, but its hard to dechipher what all the chips are for so that is why I posted here asking for what components would be needed for a functional camear.check out the ambarella a9 soc. I intend to use something like that for my project. I see they use a number of other manufacturers chips in their soc. Are there alternatives to ambarella's chip? Are there any h.265 encoders out there yet? heard broadcom would have one in mid 2014.Designing for adequate thermal performance is allso a concern. Can I fill the voids in the camera housing with thermal paste?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:03:43 pm
content: Quote from: New camera on October 22, 2013, 10:54:44 pmHow much money you planning on spending on this endeavour?It's going to require some serious coin and a lot of time, esp if you only have one guy.A good designer that can pull this off does not come cheap, and is unlikely to be able to do everything him/her self. e.g. optics, case design etc.I project of this scope is maybe best tackled by a design house that has multiple resources they can call upon.I presume you want to take this into production at some point?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:05:03 pm
content: The chips depend on what sort of outputs are required HDMI, composite SDI etc.. each may require an extra chip or two.The 3 main IC bits will be- Sensor driver (Reads the actual sensor chip and provides a stream of digital RGB data.- DSP (Does the complex math needed to process the image and corrects for gamma/brightness etc..)- MCU (runs the onscreen menus and ties the whole thing together)- Multirail Power supply (this provides all the voltages to all the chips, probably 5V, 3.3V, 1.8V)Some chips can do multiple functions so maybe combined.Then there is audio which requires opamps and SPDIF encoder if you need audio out over HDMI.Since you want 60FPS and 4k resolution you will need some pretty powerful hardware.Any combination of powerful hardware and small module (gopro size) will push the price up exponentially.Some of the chips may cost $500+ in one-off quantities and only drop to $20 when you buy 10,000 of them.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:06:17 pm
content: This guy is doing his own camera:

author: holozip
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:14:39 pm
content: holy crap... nice find. Yeah, good luck!

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:15:05 pm
content: Thank you for answers! This forum is great!I follow you on youtube by the way.As you say this is a huge project and I do have a few potential product developing houses lined up and waiting in England and elsewhere.I just need to refine the design of the camera and the scope of the project before I begin paying for their services.

author: Legit-Design
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:26:49 pm
content: Quote from: New camera on October 22, 2013, 10:54:44 pmDo you have any affiliation to mu thermal guys?Assuming you are going to crowdfund this at some point...Get two GoPro cameras tape them together, call that your "prototype". Film some sample clips with this prototype camera and just say they are from preproduction prototype. Make few renderings of what your frame/case will look like. Tell everyone you found this really cheap source for these camera sensors which you will use. If it has wifi, do the the smartphone app. Show your apple app developer license/whatever. Make nice videos with this prototype and nice website, then you need very promising video for Indiegogo/other crowdfunding site. You can just tell you are under NDA from manufacturers so you cant tell anything about anything. Also price should be fairly important maybe make it around 300$ retail so it will be really enticing to a lot of people. Don't make this miniature 3D camera too small. I think 3D requires that the lenses are far enough, natural human eye distance might be minimum for stereo image.

author: holozip
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:39:02 pm
content: H265 will certainly be interesting to watch out for in the future.I spend a lot of time dealing with encoders in my line of work (IPTV / VoD stuff). From what I've read so far, H265 is going to take a lot more processing power than H264 - which is going to bump up the hardware requirements significantly.This article is pretty interesting, the benchmarks on page two show roughly double transcode times vs. h264:http://www.extremetech.com/computing/162027-h-265-benchmarked-does-the-next-generation-video-codec-live-up-to-expectations/1Due to processing overhead of such heavyweight video - you're going to have to think hard to make it thermally viable; a small gopro sized camera isn't going to have a lot of surface area internally to dissipate heat.Power will also be interesting, how will you address the higher power demand in a small package; will it be portable? Are current lithium batteries good enough for what you need?

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:45:12 pm
content: No affiliation with mu thermal guys. I understand they promised a product and didn't deliver/deliver on time?Part of the financing will be from crowd funding indeed.I have no plans to mislead people by lying or presenting gopro videos as if they were made by my camera. I intend to deliver a good product. A nice website, good videos etc. are important. I will rely on the product developer's, manufacturer's and logistic's companies reputations for credibility. You are right about the distance between the cameras and the 3D effect.Holozip: I thought h.265 required less processing power for the same resolutions and frame rates. Am I wrong?Power will be no problem, as the battery will be external, except for a small battery in case power disconnects.

author: holozip
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:52:58 pm
content: Yep - h265, according to the benchmarks thus far, will be much heavier on CPU power. In the media industry this won't be much of an issue as most everyone is switching to GPU / OpenCL based encoding - and its easy to throw another 3 racks of encoders at the problem.I took a look at theA9 product brief, and it is only capable of 4K HD @ 30fps; and you'll be processing two sets of input data. I think what you're wanting to accomplish is beyond feasible for the next 3-5 years with off-the-shelf parts.Whilst I appreciate the spirit of your venture - I honestly think this kind of problem is best left to the big players - people with several million dollars of R&D capex and already proven track records.

author: adnewhouse
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2013, 11:54:05 pm
content: There is a reason that these kinds of cameras are not cheap. The power consumption, processing power and storage needed will be very expensive. What do you think the price might be? Also what are you planning on using for recordable media (SSD)(HDD)(Something else?)? It sounds like a great place to innovate a solution but please forgive me for being skeptical.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:06:32 am
content: for storage I was thinking micro sdxc. From what I have seen online, the prices for consumers are a bit under a US Dollar per gigabyte.http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sdxcMicro sdxc will eventually go to 2TB capacity !!!! The data speeds allso seem fast enough for 4k at a first glance.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:10:24 am
content: A person calling him/herself mystery on this site comments about 4k at 60fps.http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/5787/ambarella-arm-cortex-a9-system-on-chip-camera-supporting-4k-ultra-hd/p1MysteryMystery April 7I'll tell you a truth. There are engineering internal settings editors for various ambarella chips floating around on the net. This will be how gopro set theirs up for 4k. Various cameras have combination button access to internal configuration editor. If you use, you can hack many similar cameras, more than ever done here so far. If set to max and menu settings for shutter etc and manual control configuration, a big improvement.gopro forums have experimented.Another truth. Latest chips can pull raw off of the right sensor at high frame rate before compression. So 4kp60±. It would be interesting if such raw could be output to new ultra high speed sd card, Usb3 or hdmi uncompressed then to recorder black magic may make cheap one again. If not, circuit traces might yield data.If it could at least be made to output uncompressed clean live, that would be useful.Many older chipset cameras might be made to do fullhd or better uncompressed Still, like a pocket gh2.See here for nice example under revision for this year:iainsinclair.com/products.php?page=3

author: holozip
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:21:52 am
content: Looking at RAW video numbers is fun. 4K @ 60fps and you'd fill a 32GB SD card in a little under 30 seconds - if you could write to it that quicklyCheck this out:http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fps.asp?width=4096&height=2160&fps=60&interlace=on&space=rgb444&depth=12Encoding on the fly is the only sensible way to do it. The A9 simply hasn't got enough horse power to deal with two 4K streams (required for 3D), and then encode them both at the same time at 60fps. No secret options or firmware hacks are going to get around that.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:30:40 am
content: Quote from: New camera on October 22, 2013, 11:45:12 pmYes, the project is a running joke on this forum and others :->https://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/m-thermal-imager-real-or-fake/48 pages worth!QuoteNo one gives a toss about a website.Well, ok, some gullible people do, but otherwise, no.QuoteI'd be very careful doing that I were you. For those who know about this sort of stuff (i.e. us here on a technical forum) we know their reputation means nothing for such a project, it's the old "garbage in - garbage out" concept. There are countless reputable companies who can do what you want, but they will only be as good as your guidance and how you run the project. You can't just shift the burden of reputation and responsibility onto them. You are paying them to do a job directed by you, and they will happily do a great job and produce nothing tangible until all the money dries up, if that's how you will drive them. (not saying you will of course, but the point is the burden is still almost entirely on you)

author: adnewhouse
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:33:28 am
content: Even if you could encode dual 4k streams at 60fps into H.264 according to my (possibly wrong) math it would by roughly 17GB per second. No way SdXC is doing that.(Check this outhttp://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/video/articles/h264_primer/h264_primer.pdf)Edit: I was wrong with my fast math but the bit rate is still incredibly high! Maybe around 300 mbps.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 01:15:57 am
content: Quote from: holozip on October 23, 2013, 12:21:52 amSo then the solution is to do as gopro does and separate the camera into two synchronised cameras. Can one save everythong onto one sd card then? What about streaming video from a video out port? Can both cameras' data streams be channeled through one cable? What about power? Hdmi doesnt provide power as is, so usb or custom system must be used?The solution is then to split the camera into two cameras amd synchronise them like gopro does. Could one still write to one sdxc card?About the thermal management, of the casing is made of metal (aluminium?) and all voids are filled with heat conducting paste, then the whole frame would work as a radiator/ heat sink.

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 01:21:15 am
content: Even the GoPro's crash due to excessive heat..A 3D camera would be a bit bigger, but would also pack a lot more electronics, it could also be advertised as a camera AND a grill.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 01:39:13 am
content: Sorry. I switched to my telephone for writing and i lost the ability to keep an overview of what I was writing and i repeated my self.I guess the danger in this project is that the project might fall victim to scope creep after financing is settled, thus risking spending so much money that i can afford only half of the logistics or worse... So settling for a feature set before diving into the project is a must. The problem is that in order to not spend exorbitant amounts of money on the developent of the project, I would be wise to let the solutions out there dictate the feature set, but I dont know what that feature set can be before I have presold a bunch of these devices with the promise of a certain feature set. Catch 22.I could of course first sell it to those that do not care too much about whether they get 4k60 or 4k30 and use the money from those sales to finance the work needed to make the answer clear enough for others. There are government grants that could be ised for this.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 01:47:30 am
content: Quote from: senso on October 23, 2013, 01:21:15 amthat would be nice for winter, wouldn't it?I suspect that the gopro cameras don't get rid of the heat, rather they just become progressively hotter, discipating the heat withing the casing in the heat sink and elsewhere until, just before they become too hot, the battery is discharged. I don't think you can run the gopro on external power for this reason. My design will seek to avoid this problem by radiating heat to the surroundings at the same rate it is generated, if possible.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 02:26:44 am
content: Quote from: New camera on October 23, 2013, 01:39:13 amThat's what happens to a lot crowd funded projects. When doing a project like this it is vital that you understand how much time and effort it takes to develop such a product and bring it to market. If you don't know this intimately, your odds of failure in this regard are quick high.And once again, it's not something you can just fob off to the design house. If they give you a time estimate of say 6 months, there are many things that can not go to plan to delay that. In fact I'd be surprised if a design house would give a turn-key quote for such a project.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 02:27:18 am
content: Quote from: New cameraOk, I'm a noob and lost here, do you mind share "briefly" your own past experience, certain related skills and strengths at certain disciplines or advantages/uniqueness required to prepare/plan/run/maintain this project ? Again, just briefly without exposing too many personal details.Another stupid question if you don't mind, what make this project idea can not easily copied/stolen by someone else reading this thread ? You do agree this is important, right ?

author: johnnyfp
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 02:37:58 am
content: 3d printthis, attach 2 GoPro's and then you will have a 3d camera at 4k (ish, as Gopro only support 4k at 15fps).A lot more chunky for sure, but don't 3d Camera's need the lens separation as wide as a human pair of eyes?

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 05:53:19 am
content: Don't know about 3D stuff but 4k HD from 2 sensors @60FPS is probably doable with a big enough FPGA or ASIC to handle the encoding... but then it will be $$$.

author: Jon86
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 06:31:14 am
content: I can't see this happening somehow... It just sounds a lot like those kickstarter campaigns by people with little or no industry experience.I think the biggest thing here is, if it can be done so easily and cheaply why hasn't it been done? I think you'll find there's a lot more to it than meets the eye.

author: M. András
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 08:01:19 am
content: you would need some serious ssd too, the enterprise ones can do only 3-5gb/s not 17 and those are pcie sized cards

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 08:51:24 am
content: There is a very very simple and cheap solution to the storage bandwidth issue - use multiple cards in parallel. SD cards are cheap, and don't need many pins, and it would be easy to implement multiple controllers in an FPGA.Obviously it is less convenient, but you can always de-interleave afterwards onto a single card or upload from the interleaved cards via USB3/GigE

author: edwardcurrentclamps
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 09:11:30 am
content: I want to build a portable Hadron collider. I visited CERN and thought you guys can maybe help me

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 10:11:44 am
content: Do a teardown of a RED 4k camera and you might get some idea of the complexity.Of course you have to buy one first

author: ConKbot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:03:49 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on October 23, 2013, 08:51:24 amdont forget about the royalties to use something faster than SPI mode...

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:35:44 pm
content: LolThey'll be *vanishingly* small compared to the cost of designing and manufacturing a product like this. A legal headache, perhaps, but the actual expense will be lost in noise for sure.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:39:17 pm
content: Quote from: edwardcurrentclamps on October 23, 2013, 09:11:30 amI can. Give me a few £million and I promise I'll try really, really hard to make you one. I'll even make a web site and update it every so often with exciting news about how you'll be able to download pictures of broken atoms to your phone!

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2013, 12:45:11 pm
content: Quote from: ConKbot on October 23, 2013, 12:03:49 pmThe cost of that isn't significant compared to other costs for a project like this - something like $1K+$1500 PA

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pm
content: Thank you guys for your help thus far. Will go on a search for a gopro, red camera and chips.I have a another question, though. After the imaging sensor, how long can the wires to the next component be without needing some form of amplifier? And the same question for the chip that comes after the imaging chip. How small can it be and how long can the wire. Wires or wire be from it to the next chip.Could you guys allso give your thoughts on what you see as my biggest stumbling blocks to overcome for this project succed and what should I do to overcome them. I realise you don't know what the project is, but since I see a bit of pessimism, would you please care to articulate what makes you pessimistic. It might be very helpful to me.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 24, 2013, 10:17:05 pm
content: Quote from: New camera on October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pmThe reason we are pessimistic, and what your biggest stumbling block will be, is that you have zero experience in electronics design or manufacture, and this is a very advanced project with a lot of traps for even experienced designers. You can't learn this stuff in a few months.It is very unlikely that this project will simply pop out working at the end of a design cycle. There will be issues, probably lots of them you'll need to tackle. You'll have to do various concept prototypes to see what things are feasible and what things are not.And as mentioned, you can't just palm this responsibility off to the design house. Well, actually, you can, if you have an infinite amount of money and time. But sooner or later the design house is going to come back to you with issues, and you have to make a decision on the best way to proceed or get around the hurdle. Sure, they can also provide you with various options to go forward, but the attitude will probably be "hey, it's project, you make the decision".The most common outcome, when someone with no design experience tries to hire someone to get someone else to do a project like this for them, is that it flops because they run out of either time or money, or both. It is very common with crowd source funded projects, and the reason why most of them are either 1) very late, and/or 2) don't meet their design criteria, or simply don't deliver anything before the money runs out.And there is nothing new with crowd funding, it's been happening for a hundred years when "inventors" come up with an idea and pay someone to, as you put it "do the hard core engineering bits". The results are no different.So knowing what you want in this 3D camera, and being able to manage the design project and pull this off, are two entirely different things.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2013, 05:19:33 am
content: Quote from: New camera on October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pmThis shows you don't understand electronics at all... so I suggest you go learn a bit more first, and at least show that you've done some research on the matter.Quote from: New camera on October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pmSee above.

author: dr_p
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2013, 06:40:58 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on October 24, 2013, 10:17:05 pmMarconi got away with it

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2013, 09:07:27 pm
content: Quote from: New camera on October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pmtime and willingness. other things are food, water and shelter and toilet, those basic stuffs.Quote from: New camera on October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pmbe patient, dont talk too much and move your ass by the time you finish reading this post.Quote from: New camera on October 24, 2013, 08:30:12 pmhow can it be? how can you tell something that you dont know? how you know what you dont know?

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2013, 10:28:42 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on October 25, 2013, 09:07:27 pmFirst of all thank you.Second, I wrote "might"Back to topic though. I was wondering how long the flex pcb from the ccd sensor could potentially be.

author: New camera
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2013, 10:30:07 pm
content: seems the image didnt show.I added it as an attachement this time.

author: qno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2013, 06:36:33 pm
content: To see what is needed try a project with 2 640x480 cameras.If this does what you are looking for it is time to scale it up.

author: Terabyte2007
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2013, 07:46:25 pm
content: Some of these replies are brutal, but I have to say, very true. I am not only a software developer but do hardware as well, and a project of this magnitude being designed by a single person (with little or no experience) or even a few people is just silly. There are many large scale companies such as Vision Research, GoPro and so on, which have access to large design teams and resources. In my opinion, working on a smaller more manageable project to fill a need in the market place is a much more sensible goal. You might find (assuming you succeed), that the product your working on will already be dated and no longer desirable in that market. Technology is changing at a rapid rate, in some cases at a logarithmic rate with even the most advanced technology companies running to keep up. This all sounds good on paper, the reality is much much more! Trust me, I have been there!Just my two cents!