Advice on night-vision camera and transmission

[Sanders DeNardi]

My roommate and I have a cat that likes to go out at night around our neighborhood. I know he stays within a 2/3 block radius because we'll sometimes see him wandering around when walking our dog. We came up with a project where we'd like to mount a small camera on him and broadcast the video back to one of our laptops to see where he goes during the night. We'd ideally get a cat harness and attach the electronics to it and put the camera sensor itself on his collar. We'd like the entire package as small and light as possible in case he goes into some tight places.

I'm an electrical engineer but I'm not too familiar with the different types of camera sensors and modern wireless transmission methods (focused on VLSI design). My question is what type of camera and transmission method you would recommend. I know that I could probably use an SD card to just record the video, and this is an avenue I may go down later, but for now we want to see whether we can monitor it in real-time.

Thanks in advance for your help.

-Sanders

[Alpay Kasal]

I can't point you in the direction of specific cameras but I can tell you that most any ccd is IR sensitive when you pull out the IR filter. i have done this with many small cameras in the past - in front of the CCD sensor is often a little piece of glass or plastic, this is coated with a film that cuts certain ranges of wavelengths. My need is often to allow IR through, but cut visible light. anyway, if you remove this filter, you will see more spectrum that makes sense for you at night. pop an ir led or 5 on the harness and now you're talking real nightvision that human eyes will not be able to see (though I wonder if other animals might be able to see this spectrum, you might make your cat less stealthy, and perhaps the laughing stock of the alley).

Alpay Kasal
Artist/Engineer
http://Supertou.ch
twitter: @alpaykasal
blog: http://blog.LitStudios.com

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[Sanders DeNardi]

Haha, I'm not so much worried about his fashion as I am about his late-night antics. I think I've seen some Animal Planet special where dogs and cats have similar sensitivities to light and dark (same wave spectrum).

Thanks for your help Alpay, now hopefully someone can answer my wireless question.

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 7:04 PM, Miller Adam <jma...@css.org> wrote:

Can you imagine the humiliation?

It's almost as bad as the outfits people make their dogs wear....

J. Miller Adam
Photography, Graphic Design, Video, Glassmaking
The Colorado Springs School
jma...@css.org

[psy...@alphaonelabs.com]

Add to that a RC PTZ laser pointer and you can guide your cat home!

psytek

http://alphaonelabs.com

[Matthew Sparks]

you could start small and put a gps logger on its collar

Matt Sparks

--

[Ronald "Monty" Montemayor]

we do this on Rc plane, search the Internet for fpv. not sure what your budget is, or go.to hobbyking.com and check for some cheap fpv gadgets.

[Sanders DeNardi]

Thanks Monty, I'll look into that site.

I was reading about some very simple VHF circuits last night that take in a regular composite video signal and rebroadcast it. I've looked at some CCD sensors that have built-in DACs to convert the signal to NTSC composite but they're significantly larger than the sensors that just output the digital signal (>1" vs <1cm). For this reason I'm leaning toward using a wireless technology like ZigBee that I can just feed the digital signal into. My main concerns with this is the range vs VHF.

Any other suggestions are greatly appreciated.

-Sanders

[Chris Clearfield]

It seems to me that there's no reason why you couldn't just pipe the
digital signal out over VHF.

You'd have to process it on the other side to be able to view it
(e.g., to NTSC), but there's no reason you can't transmit it however
you want to.
--
Chris

--
Chris Clearfield

[ZihniSinir]

If you all want to know where your cat is, then I think you should go
for a GPS+ MAP solution.
It's so small and the data you'll be transferring is not much as
streaming video.
you can even write an application to you mphone to display a radar
like (007 :) screen, comparing your location and the cat, showing
something like this;

http://media.courierpress.com/media/img/vthumbs/2009/10/29/Ghost_Radar_t320_240.png

:)

On Feb 27, 7:16 pm, psy...@alphaonelabs.com wrote:
> Add to that a RC PTZ laser pointer and you can guide your cat home!
>

> psytekhttp://alphaonelabs.com

>
> On Feb 27, 2012, at 6:59 PM, Alpay Kasal <al...@litstudios.com> wrote:
>
> I can't point you in the direction of specific cameras but I can tell you
> that most any ccd is IR sensitive when you pull out the IR filter. i have
> done this with many small cameras in the past - in front of the CCD sensor
> is often a little piece of glass or plastic, this is coated with a film
> that cuts certain ranges of wavelengths. My need is often to allow IR
> through, but cut visible light. anyway, if you remove this filter, you will
> see more spectrum that makes sense for you at night. pop an ir led or 5 on
> the harness and now you're talking real nightvision that human eyes will
> not be able to see (though I wonder if other animals might be able to see
> this spectrum, you might make your cat less stealthy, and perhaps the
> laughing stock of the alley).
>
> Alpay Kasal

> Artist/Engineerhttp://Supertou.ch

> twitter: @alpaykasal
> blog:http://blog.LitStudios.com
>

> On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:05:57 -0500, Sanders DeNardi <sandman1...@gmail.com>

> wrote:
>
> My roommate and I have a cat that likes to go out at night around our
> neighborhood. I know he stays within a 2/3 block radius because we'll
> sometimes see him wandering around when walking our dog. We came up with a
> project where we'd like to mount a small camera on him and broadcast the
> video back to one of our laptops to see where he goes during the night.
> We'd ideally get a cat harness and attach the electronics to it and put the
> camera sensor itself on his collar. We'd like the entire package as small
> and light as possible in case he goes into some tight places.
>
> I'm an electrical engineer but I'm not too familiar with the different
> types of camera sensors and modern wireless transmission methods (focused
> on VLSI design). My question is what type of camera and transmission method
> you would recommend. I know that I could probably use an SD card to just
> record the video, and this is an avenue I may go down later, but for now we
> want to see whether we can monitor it in real-time.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> -Sanders
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "NYCResistor:Microcontrollers" group.
> To post to this group, send email to
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> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> nycresistormicrocon...@googlegroups.com.

> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/nycresistormicrocontrollers?hl=en.

[Sanders DeNardi]

I'm more interested in getting video from him, seeing what he sees rather than just location.

[Luke Schantz]

Consider recording the media to the camera on the cat and downloading it to your laptop later.  I think you are going to have many issues with broadcasting video back real time.  Try one of these keychain cameras that people have been hacking around with.

Luke

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 3:44 AM, ZihniSinir <murat...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Pablo Martinez]

Something like this perhaps?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/cheapest-2-4G-wireless-mini-spy-pinhole-CCTV-audio-and-video-color-camera-/250997490915?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a709dc4e3#ht_2642wt_1376 

-Sanders

--

[R.M.Ellsworth]

>Something like this perhaps?

Yes, but I'd go ahead and spend the extra money for

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wireless-Spy-Mini-Camera-USB-wireless-DVR-
bundle-New-support-win-7-64-bits-/260928502702?
pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cc08cfbae

which does the 'heavy lifting' to provide a matching 2.4GHz receiver
with autodetect and USB plug-'n-save capability...

And I would also note, perhaps, that this vendor has some items that
have the IR illumination provided. Again, it should be possible to
make one of these cameras "IR-sensitive" by removing an internal
filter -- check with the vendor on this -- with the understanding
that the use of the camera in daylight or strong-light situations
might be somewhat compromised.

[Anthony Nicolaides]

Saw this and your post came to mind

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/kitty-cam-uga-research-national-geographic-killing_n_1757070.html 

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[Sanders DeNardi]

I saw that too, very interesting results, I always knew cats were killers.

Just a follow up to what we did. We ended up doing something very similar to what this article did. We used some SparkFun CMOS camera sensors and recorded the video feed to a microSD card. We used an MPEG-4 encoder chip (was like $10) to compress the feed on the fly. Rather than buy the already-made IR cameras, we just removed the IR filter on the sensor and wired up a bunch of wide-angle IR LEDs to the entire device. We also attached a fisheye lens to the sensor. We used a SparkFun GPS receiver to track his movements, and got a surprisingly detailed map of where he goes. Battery life was very good, we used one of the 3.7 6 Ah batteries and it lasted well throughout the night, I think it could go for a whole day if his day was interesting enough.

Overall the project was a success. We got some extremely interesting footage which we're sorting through. I did see that he climbed a tree and peeped into someone's window. Anyway. thanks for you guys' help.

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[Ian Harris]

Hi Sanders, 

That sounds like a great project.  Which MPEG-4 encoder chip did you use?

cheers

Ian.

[Sanders DeNardi]

We used an IP core with (I believe) an Altera Cyclone 3 FPGA. My friend works with embedded systems and, somewhat illegally I suppose, used his company's license to get the actual encoder. He did most of that stuff, I put together the other bits and assembled the device.