Harware
The primary goal of this project is to develop a hardware platform primarily targeted at real-time image processing. The system is designed to fully exploit the advantages of the FPGA computing platform, namely the performance and the flexibility. Furthermore, optimizing constraints like power and size were considered and adressed through the scalability of the system, which allows for the usage of the resources according to the application needs.
The PICSY platform entails these constructing PCB board scalable stack-up modules:
- Coordinator Main Module
- Coordinator Daughter Module
- DSP Module
- Camera Head Board Module
The daughter board holds high speed communication like Ethernet and USB and the power supply. The coordinator is the central unit of the whole system and also has a camera interface. On the other hand a high speed parallel bus (LVDS) is available for connecting further extension boards like a stack onto the coordinator board. These could be DSP boards which hold only an FPGA and memory banks to increase the overall computational power. Or to explore multi-vision algorithms a board with three more camera interfaces and an additional VGA-Output which is very helpful for video applications. With increased effort in PCB design the whole system fit into a small dimensioned camera housing.