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TM4C129 EPI to CMOS sensor interface

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: AM3354

HI,


I am working on a customer requirement where a CMOS sensor (finger print sensor) is to be interfaced to Processor in a very low budget. Can EPI of TM4C129 be configured to interface to a CMOS Sensor? It is not a video application for continuous capture and storing.

Obvious answer will be to use AM335x or other camera interface solutions, but the overall cost of solution is higher than target cost. Some of the security features are also address by Tiva C series which meet requirement.

Present system uses Cypress EZ-USB series microcontroller and GPIF on this microcontroller is configured for interface to CMOS sensor.


Can anyone from TI advice on this possibility and configuration?


Regards,

Upendra Patel

Glide Technology Pvt Ltd

  • Hello Upendra

    Which CMOS Sensor is being used, what are the speed requirements, what is the interface voltage, what is the communication protocol, quite some information is needed before we can make an assessment on this.

    What is the compuatation requirements, also makes a difference

    Regards

    Amit

  • Hello Amit,


    The CMOS sensor will be Omnivision OV7720 or equivalent. Interface voltage is 1.8V to 3.3V. Communication protocol will be standard raw RGB format.

    Computation requirements can be compromised to lower frame rate, if it can be met with single chip solution like TM4C129.

    We had proposed solution based on AM3354, but it still works out expensive and space constrained due to additional components required.


    Regards,

    Upendra

  • Hi Upendra,

    The CMOS sensor will be Omnivision OV7720 or equivalent.

    OV7720 (and other OV series) has bus-master video interface
    - the bus timing lines, PCLK, HREF and VSYNC are outputs

    Tiva C EPI is also a bus-master in all its mode.
    - Clock, RD, WR, Frame, etc are outputs

    You can’t directly connect two bus-masters together.

    Unfortunately, CMOS sensors with bus-master video interface are popular,
    I don’t know any bus-slave (peripheral type) one.

    Though I don’t like to refer to TI’s competitors,
    to apply popular CMOS sensors in your design, you may search for other MCU products.

    For example,
    ’S’ company’s Cortex-M3/M4 lines mount dedicated DCMI (Digital Camera Interface)
    ’N’ company opens an application note for their M3/M4 MCUs.
    - AN11365: SCT camera interface design with xxx

    Tsuneo

  • Hi Tsuneo,


    Thanks for your response. We will look for Cortex-A8 based solution.

    Upendra