OMAP3530 and camera

Tomer Dayan said:

1) What types of cameras can be interfaced with te omap3530 and windows CE ?

In TI site I found only one camera: e-CAM50_OMAP35x of e-consystems but I wonder whether there are more options which supports windows CE.

 It all depends if you are looking a complete camera solution or if you will develop it.

a) HW Interface:
Generaly speaking OMAP35xx features a camera interface that accept BT.656 input and Raw data. So you could typically connect:
 - On the BT.656 interface:
     a video decoder (like TVP5150) so that PAL/NTSC analog camera could be connected
- On the RAW interface:
    a CMOS or CCDC sensor

It looks like that the e-CAM32_OMAP35x uses an Omnivision CMOS sensor.

b) SW Drivers:
Being able to interface the HW is not enough. If you want to support a camera out of the box you need the according drivers.

- It is usually not an issue for the BT.656 interface since a lot of different PAL/NTSC analog can be connected to the same video decoder. But it is mainly for PAL/NTSC standard.

- For CMOS and CCDC sensors it is more complex. The OMAP35xx Camera interface has got on-chip module that is in charge of enhancing the raw picture. This need to be customized to every CMOS sensors.
As of today we do support only a couple of Sensors as part of the Linux drivers (Micron/Aptina sensors).

For WinCE you would need to check with the companies that provide Win CE for OMAP35xx what is available from them.

I think there will more choices for Linux compare to WinCE. May be there is a way to port the Linux drivers to WinCE.

c) Camera modules:
Some camera modules are available for some other processors like DM365/DM355...etc.

On their blog (http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/omap-35x-camera/) they mention that their module could work on DM365. I guess that as well DM355/DM365 camera module could work on OMAP35xx.
There are different DM355/DM365 camera modules:
        http://designsomething.org/leopardboard/default.aspx
        http://www.appropho.com/NewWeb/Product_DM355.php
but:
    - it is mainly supported on Linux. For WinCE you would need to check if some company have done the porting.
    - The linux kernel tree is different between OMAP35xx and DM3xx (DaVinci) so even the Linux driver might not work as is.   

See as well this post:
    http://e2e.ti.com/support/dsp/omap_applications_processors/f/447/p/29876/103871.aspx

Tomer Dayan said:

2) Is it possible to connect the camera to OMAP using long distance cable (about 3 meters) ?

I don't think that the standard video digital interface (BT.656 or raw data) can work over long distance via a cable. It is meant for on-board interfacing.

May be you could have a long cable between an analog camera and a video decoder (TVP5xxx) but you will have to check is the signal atenuation does not cause problems to decode the video.

It is likely that you will have to look a SERDES interface for longer distances like LVDS / serdes:
http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/landing/serdes/index.htm

May be an USB camera could be used as well. Firewire/1394 could have been an option but there are no such interface on OMAP35xx.