Patent ID: 8085342

Claim:
A single-chip wireless camera comprising; a receiving element to wirelessly receive external command signals from a remote device, wherein the external command signals comprise: a command to switch between multiple modes of operations comprising an operating state, a receiving state and a sleep state, and a programmable command to program said camera to perform one or more imaging operations corresponding to the modes of operations; an active pixel sensor having a plurality of addressable units, each said unit associated with a pixel processing element; active pixel sensor control circuitry, including circuiting that addresses and controls reading operation of the active pixel sensor; a power management element to support the operating state in which circuitry of the chip is powered, the receiving state in which the receiving element is powered once within a duration of time, and the sleep state in which most circuitry is unpowered; and a programmable control logic coupled to the receiving element and the active pixel sensor, operating to respond to the received command signals and to control an amount of battery consumption used by said camera by performing the following: responsive to the received command to switch between the multiple modes of operation, switching between the operating state, the receiving state and the sleep state to allocate power among components of said camera including the receiving element and the active pixel sensor, and responsive to the received programmable command, editing an image signal received from the active pixel sensor by performing the one or more imaging operations selected from a group consisting of: subsampling said active pixel sensor, the subsampling comprising powering fewer than all of the plurality of addressable units to receive an entirety of an overall image in a reduced resolution, windowing said active pixel sensor to receive a subset of the overall image by powering only a corresponding subset of the active pixel sensor, and altering an exposure time to control brightness and contrast of the entirety or the subset of the overall image.