30FPS HD USB Webcam

schmidtbag
schmidtbag New Member Posts: 2
edited September 2018 in UP Board Linux

So I'm working on an OpenCV project that depends on a live webcam feed at 30FPS, and a bare minimum resolution of 720p (but preferably 1080p). The webcam stream is MJPEG, and I intend to run Linux.
However, I'm not feeling so confident if the UP board's CPU is powerful enough to do this. The closest reference point I have is a laptop with a 1.7GHz i3 (2c/4t) based on Haswell that seems to be able to just barely keep up with 720p @ 30FPS.

The UP's CPU is a more recent model and has 4 cores instead of 2, but since it is an Atom, I'm not sure if it may be lacking instructions or JPEG hardware decoders. Besides, this is a single-threaded task, so the extra real cores shouldn't matter. I've also read that some people never got it beyond 1.6GHz.

So, I was wondering if anybody had experience with this scenario, and if the UP board is capable of handling this workload.

Comments

  • ccalde
    ccalde New Member Posts: 348 ✭✭✭

    Hi @schmidtbag ,

    I worked with UP2 board and OpenCV at 25FPS and 720p without problems :)
    I think you could try first at 25 and then if it's ok for you, test at 30FPS.

    Cheers!

  • schmidtbag
    schmidtbag New Member Posts: 2

    Thanks for the quick reply.

    Did you get one of the Atom or Celeron UP2s? Because the Celerons have significantly better single-threaded performance, where I figure that should be able to handle 1080p@25FPS.

    In my use case, framerate is actually more important than resolution (resolution is also important, just not as much). If I could go beyond 30FPS without spending $200+ on a camera, I would. So, although 25FPS isn't bad, every lost frame counts.

    All that being said, in your experiment, were any of the CPU cores maxed out, and, was your camera capable of reaching a steady 30FPS?

  • ccalde
    ccalde New Member Posts: 348 ✭✭✭

    Hi @schmidtbag ,

    I used the Celeron UP2 board.

    About the CPU cores, I don't remember to get maxed out.
    And no sorry, but I never tested at 30FPS, but I think you will not have problems with that.

    Cheers!

  • gomathi
    gomathi New Member Posts: 4

    We have used See3CAM_CU135 https://www.e-consystems.com/4k-usb-camera.asp . The key is to use the libav library for MJPEG decoding and also adjust the camera parameters little bit to reduce the bandwidth. We have tried this camera with UP board and able to receive 960p and 1080p @ 30 fps MJPEG

  • ccalde
    ccalde New Member Posts: 348 ✭✭✭

    Hi @gomathi ,

    Thank you very much for your review!