Capturing video from ethernet camera into FPGA

micrblaze linux

Hi,
Anyone can help me on how to develop software for capturing video from ethernet camera to be stored into block RAM inside the fpga(spartan-3) ?

What i'm thinking was to buy xilinx's MAC IP Core. Is there anyway to get video contents from camera and store to fpga?

Tq.

If the data is directly transferred from ethernet interface and u have the ethernet driver runing. Then on the FPGA side u need a ethernet 10/100/1000 based on the camera interface and then receive it and then transfer the contenet toa block RAM.

Then the sw should initlize the MAC IP and through some processor interface.

you can get a free mac core from :

https://www.opencores.org

if you use udp/ip protocol you can process the data to memory by hw or sw.

you will also need to support arp request protocol. (ARP/RARP).

however the amount of the data will be too high for typical bram !

you can put a pc sniffer on the camera ethernet and check the protocol.

Thank you for reply.

What about a device that can convert the ethernet format into parallel data? So that I can stored easily into fpga's RAM for further processing. Is there any device that has PHY and MAC's chip and outputting parallel data?

Thanks

ewan said:

What about a device that can convert the ethernet format into parallel data? So that I can stored easily into fpga's RAM for further processing. Is there any device that has PHY and MAC's chip and outputting parallel data?

Click to expand...

Pretty much all mac's will only output parallel data because they are designed to be connected to a parallel bus for easy cpu/dma access. You will want to use some kind of cpu/dsp, possibly in conjunction with a dmac, to take the data out of the mac because you will have to process the network protocol headers under software control.

As was mentioned earlier, udp/ip will simplify your task (vs. tcp/ip), and it's possible that you can find a camera that will stream udp (or rtp) directly, although most network cameras are designed to stream mpeg rather than uncompressed video. Your cpu must strip off the rtp (or udp), ip and mac headers and then store the resulting raw video data in fpga ram. If you have any kind of decent video resolution, the data is really going to be screaming in, so you will need deep mac buffers and/or you will have to use dma to move the data from mac to fpga.

tq for reply.

The ethernet camera that I have will output mpeg4 frame. Is there any camera that can output udp/rtp data?

Another problem is that I have no idea how to access the ethernet camera's data. They give me a CD to install the software on windows pc. but I dont think I will use that CD...do anyone has any idea?
tq again....

as i wrote before the best way for you is to install it first on pc, thn use a sniffer oprogram to capture and analyse the ethernet traffic, thus you will know the kind of protocol being used.

I have installed the software on pc. and observed that udp/ip packet is coming in.

now, i wish to capture the video frame directly into fpga without going through pc. any suggestion?
tq

ewan said:

I have installed the software on pc. and observed that udp/ip packet is coming in.

now, i wish to capture the video frame directly into fpga without going through pc. any suggestion?

Click to expand...

Are we to assume that your fpga is on some kind of stand-alone board that does not live inside a pc? And does this board have a phy on it? You must have a discrete phy component (or integrated mac/phy) as the fpga can't implement this part of your network interface.

I must reiterate here: you will need a cpu to move the data from mac to fpga ram. This is needed even if your stream is uncompressed video, because the data is arriving in packetized form. A cpu will REALLY be essential if you are dealing with compressed video, because you will need to decode the mpeg stream before you can store it to fpga ram.

So in summary, you can drop ip cores into your fpga that would include mac, mpeg decoder and cpu, but you will still need an external interface to connect the fpga to the network's physical layer. This is not something that can be integrated onto the fpga.

tq for reply.

actually at the beginning,i planned to hook directly the ethernet camera to rj45 socket on fpga's board. but, i'll need MAC IP core module to interface it with PHY chip. and it is very expensive and very complicated job.

So, i changed my plan to find a device such as a converter (that i will not bother about MAC-PHY interfacing ) so that I can read a raw data from ethernet camera. maybe out there has a device so-called ethernet-to-parallel converter?
tq

Added after 1 minutes:

forgot to mention here...my project is a standalone system. tq

Hol a seecond... What are you planning to do for example you can get Altera Stratix board what alreay comes with Etherent SDRAM on the board, an all HW/SW including NIOS (soft CPU) to start your development

as written before there are 2 options.

1, use a mac core (can get it for free) , and process the udp stack with soft core cpu, like microblaze.

2. use a mac core + hw udp / ip stack core, which is not complicated (maybe you can find free core for this) . you ca look for information in

www.altera.com/literature/an/an374.pdf

ewan, are you familiar with fpga ? from your previous posts i assume you are not well in it.
So why are you trying to use fpga ?
fpfa is not the only thing you can play video with.

hi all. i'm a beginner in fpga field.i only knew the basic thing such as handling parallel data and some basic mathematic implementation. using IP MAC core with too many pins are difficult for me to program it. there are a lot of pins to be connected between MAC-PHY layer and also MAC-to-upper layer.

if there is a way which i can capture raw data from external ethernet camera into fpga by using parallel pins (without bothering about MAC-PHY interfacing) i appreciated so much. tq

ewan said:

if there is a way which i can capture raw data from external ethernet camera into fpga by using parallel pins (without bothering about MAC-PHY interfacing) i appreciated so much. tq

Click to expand...

Sorry, but I don't believe there's a way to do this

I found this module through internet. How do u think? is it can help my problem?
I attach this file for your reference.tq

ewan, if you will go through answer gave to you by above users and try to understand them via simple study you will get familiar with what you have to meet when doing such projects and that include :
- implementing ethernet
- tcpip protocols. do you think to do it in vhld or verilog ? That will be quite difficult for beginner .
- udp and probably rtp protocol

Yet you can make your life easy by using microprocessor core such as microblaze to make all things in source code ( micrblaze does run linux and concerned source code is ready to use)

Or you can find try to find ready to use microprocesssor chips where ethernet is already implemented . Those usually support linux or windows mobile .

Or you can try to find sbc board where everything is ready to go for you .

But what you are trying is to ask questions without understanding answers given to you previously.

Yet, there is no magic and easy way for your task if you re trying to make it from scratch, so you have to go little bit into details to understand what yo are dealing with then choose most suitable and feasible decision for you based on cost/time/performance/ features parameters.

Added after 37 seconds:

P.S. Give a link to document instead of posting it here

see,thx!