New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project

Wayne Morellini · July 20th, 2007, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jose A. Garcia

Just one thing... I don't think that mini laptop can handle 2k res at 24fps. Or I'm wrong? Because for $250 and an external usb disk to store the clips, it'd be perfect!

I don't know about 2K, I was more thinking along the lines of 720p24-p50 Bayer, if anybody was interested in that. I was thinking of it as an cheap processing board with screen and interfaces. Would still need to be programmed properly to reach that performance objective, and I imagine it will, unless the design, or the 900mhz Intel cpu, is handicapped. If Sumix, or Micron, has Linux code, then possible.

I like the Pico ITX, been waiting for an while, small enough to DIY your own handheld with. Would be nice if they ever offered an version that could take an laptop graphics card, or PCI-E riser card (for HDMI capture card). All those people that made field recorders, now such an solution could do the job at an fraction of the price (add HDSDI to HDMI converter).

BTW, there is supposed to be gaming MAC Mini coming, so could have workable GPU. Also, GPU equipped UMPC chip set is also supposed to be coming.

Glad to see all you other guys turning up here, you are giving good advice, good luck.

Igor Babic · July 20th, 2007, 10:26 PM

It is not that simple. In my expirience so far with various cheap usb external enclosures and PATA housings with removable drive cages we have manage to use those efectivly for a period of under a year. They usualy go broke and you loose data or conectivity. Those things are not designed to whitstand frequent drive swaping or unmounting.
Here is good info about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_...to_other_buses
If you decide to use 3.5" embeded PC like LS-371 there is no real eSATA. USB you can't use because this is already taken with your camera. We have to find HOT SWAP backplane with removable cages for 2.5" SATA HDD. This is designed for drive swaping (in case of failure, but not for every hour swaping, but it will last longer then any of other solutions). It has to have latch mechanism for securing drive in his slot, and it has to be electronicaly safe for static discarges. I have seen some of those on the internet and I think that this is what we need: http://www.addonics.com/products/jupiter/
There are also another posibility: LS-371 has compact flash slot on its back side, but I am not shure if this can go fast enough or long enogh for our purpose. This would be most elegant way to do things. CF is designed for swaping, there will be no noise and no moving parts and no additional heat and alot less power drain. There is also PATA to CF adapters you can buy cheap so you can have an aditional CF slots very easy and you can also have this for operating system. (this is the way Elphel is going BTW, and RED...) but 8gb is max easy available size and under 40mB/sec transfer rate. External Glan storage is safest way but I dont like clatering around alot of stuff. Only reason to do so is data protection (biggest reason of all) and HDD size is sky high. I have weird idea to disasemble http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ss4000-E/ and use it as a part of our camera system. So when you powering down for drive swaping you have to power down only this thing (if you ever need to swap at all). This is actualy a embeded Linux NAS pc with sata raid support. I have similar thing from another manufacturer. This is very nice thing to work with but (afcourse, there is always but...) they are very slow boot devices.

Solomon Chase · July 21st, 2007, 03:24 PM

Jose, what is the max consistent framerate you can do using the entire sensor (all pixels) on the micron cam?

Jose A. Garcia · July 21st, 2007, 05:26 PM

About 8fps at full 5mp. Why?

Igor Babic · July 22nd, 2007, 04:09 AM

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3209

Jose A. Garcia · July 22nd, 2007, 04:26 AM

I was thinking about that. Is a compact flash Ultra III card faster than a SATA disk? Cause we can always record to compact flash and also have an external USB or Firewire 500Gb HDD to backup the clips.

Jose A. Garcia · July 22nd, 2007, 04:56 AM

Ok... I think LS-371 3.5" board is just perfect for our purposes. I'll buy one as soon as I have some extra money. I'm thinking about adding a T5600 Core2Duo Mobile 1,83Ghz processor, 1Gb RAM, SATA disk and we have to think of a way to add batteries. Adding the Innovatek LCD and a few more things we can have the camera ready to go for about 2000-2500euro all included.

Igor Babic · July 22nd, 2007, 08:13 AM

Another LCD solution
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/parts/mr-xe-700y.asp
Power Supply
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/power_battery.asp
http://www.spectra.de/produktliste.c...ed%20Netzteile
Mini Keyboards
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/input_devices.asp
FireWire miniPCI
http://www.spectra.de/produktliste.c...dummy=1#113878
IDE to CF, powersupplys etc
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.14/.f
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/.f

David Delaney · July 22nd, 2007, 08:35 AM

This is a good monitor for the price.
https://www.xenarcdirect.com/product...cat=249&page=1

Igor Babic · July 22nd, 2007, 09:48 AM

Yes Xenarc is original one.
Has anybody found something like that in 5.6" or 5.8" format?
7" is too big for handheld.

Seth Kersey · July 22nd, 2007, 11:42 AM

Does the LS-371 have IDE? If not, you would need a CF > SATA adapter such as is discussed here...

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/...compact_flash/

They also point out the need to make sure the system is capable of hot-swapping. As Igor pointed out, not all SATA systems are fully compliant.

The fastest write speeds for CFx300 that I could find is 45MB/s, would that be fast enough (without RAID)? That matches the average transfer speed of the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 as seen here...

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storag...=427&chart=145

Another problem that may not be as obvious is a possible performance hit when using an adapter... I could not find any specific data in regards to this.

Here is another 7" monitor that was posted somewhere here before...
http://www.ikancorp.com/pages/monito...m.htm#features

Jose, have you done much experimenting with focus? I am wondering how difficult it is going to be to focus such a high resolution image using a 7" monitor.

Jose A. Garcia · July 22nd, 2007, 12:05 PM

That's exactly why I wanted a good sharp C Mount lens inside the camera attached to the board. Right now focusing is a bit difficult, even with a 24" lcd, but that's just because the lens that came with the board can't focus any sharper. We need everything inside the camera to be tack sharp. If we can get to that point, I think it will be much easier to focus with a 7" screen. By the way, I don't really think 7" is too large. We're talking about 2k filmmaking here. We're not building a handycam. We need to see what we're doing as clear as possible. Just take a look at the lcds they're using at RED or NOX... The nOX in fact has a 8.4" touchscreen lcd and it "just" shoots 2k.

Igor Babic · July 22nd, 2007, 12:56 PM

LS-371 has 44pin IDE 2.5"HDD header onboard. Please, everybody intrested download and carefully read user manual for this little gem. Help Jose to be shure that this is right board for his project.
CF is on back side. There is two SATA1 headers onboard with no RAID. They supply you with all cables for motherboard and CPU cooler.

Here are MiniPCI cards. Here is SATA RAID 0,1 card also in case all goes wrong.
http://www.globalamericaninc.com/oth..._PCI_&_AGP.php

Take Vos · July 22nd, 2007, 01:11 PM

I myself am planning to use naked SATA disks.

I have a eSATA card (but you can also use a normal SATA card).

And I have a eSATA to SATA cable and an power adapter with a SATA-power connector. So it is just to small cables into a bare disk.

Maybe I will design a bracket to be mounted below my notebook, where I can simply slide the disk in and out off.

Cheers,
Take

Jose A. Garcia · July 22nd, 2007, 02:08 PM

Well, I'm actually quite sure this is the board we need. It's just perfect. By the way, is it compatible with non-mobile core2duo processors? Those are a bit cheaper. If it is, what would be the difference between choosing a non-mobile processor and a mobile one?

July 20th, 2007, 10:26 PM	#212
Igor Babic Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Zagreb, Croatia Posts: 171	removable hdd It is not that simple. In my expirience so far with various cheap usb external enclosures and PATA housings with removable drive cages we have manage to use those efectivly for a period of under a year. They usualy go broke and you loose data or conectivity. Those things are not designed to whitstand frequent drive swaping or unmounting. Here is good info about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_...to_other_buses If you decide to use 3.5" embeded PC like LS-371 there is no real eSATA. USB you can't use because this is already taken with your camera. We have to find HOT SWAP backplane with removable cages for 2.5" SATA HDD. This is designed for drive swaping (in case of failure, but not for every hour swaping, but it will last longer then any of other solutions). It has to have latch mechanism for securing drive in his slot, and it has to be electronicaly safe for static discarges. I have seen some of those on the internet and I think that this is what we need: http://www.addonics.com/products/jupiter/ There are also another posibility: LS-371 has compact flash slot on its back side, but I am not shure if this can go fast enough or long enogh for our purpose. This would be most elegant way to do things. CF is designed for swaping, there will be no noise and no moving parts and no additional heat and alot less power drain. There is also PATA to CF adapters you can buy cheap so you can have an aditional CF slots very easy and you can also have this for operating system. (this is the way Elphel is going BTW, and RED...) but 8gb is max easy available size and under 40mB/sec transfer rate. External Glan storage is safest way but I dont like clatering around alot of stuff. Only reason to do so is data protection (biggest reason of all) and HDD size is sky high. I have weird idea to disasemble http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ss4000-E/ and use it as a part of our camera system. So when you powering down for drive swaping you have to power down only this thing (if you ever need to swap at all). This is actualy a embeded Linux NAS pc with sata raid support. I have similar thing from another manufacturer. This is very nice thing to work with but (afcourse, there is always but...) they are very slow boot devices.

July 22nd, 2007, 04:09 AM	#215
Igor Babic Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Zagreb, Croatia Posts: 171	compact flash http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3209

July 22nd, 2007, 11:42 AM	#221
Seth Kersey Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Dallas, TX Posts: 26	IDE or SATA? Does the LS-371 have IDE? If not, you would need a CF > SATA adapter such as is discussed here... http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/...compact_flash/ They also point out the need to make sure the system is capable of hot-swapping. As Igor pointed out, not all SATA systems are fully compliant. The fastest write speeds for CFx300 that I could find is 45MB/s, would that be fast enough (without RAID)? That matches the average transfer speed of the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 as seen here... http://www23.tomshardware.com/storag...=427&chart=145 Another problem that may not be as obvious is a possible performance hit when using an adapter... I could not find any specific data in regards to this. Here is another 7" monitor that was posted somewhere here before... http://www.ikancorp.com/pages/monito...m.htm#features Jose, have you done much experimenting with focus? I am wondering how difficult it is going to be to focus such a high resolution image using a 7" monitor.

July 22nd, 2007, 01:11 PM	#224
Take Vos Major Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Amsterdam The Netherlands Posts: 200	I myself am planning to use naked SATA disks. I have a eSATA card (but you can also use a normal SATA card). And I have a eSATA to SATA cable and an power adapter with a SATA-power connector. So it is just to small cables into a bare disk. Maybe I will design a bracket to be mounted below my notebook, where I can simply slide the disk in and out off. Cheers, Take __________________ VOSGAMES, http://www.vosgames.nl/ developer of Boom Recorder and Mirage Recorder

July 21st, 2007, 03:24 PM	#213
Solomon Chase Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Woodstock, Georgia Posts: 154	Jose, what is the max consistent framerate you can do using the entire sensor (all pixels) on the micron cam?

July 21st, 2007, 05:26 PM	#214
Jose A. Garcia Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Sevilla (Spain) Posts: 439	About 8fps at full 5mp. Why?

July 22nd, 2007, 04:26 AM	#216
Jose A. Garcia Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Sevilla (Spain) Posts: 439	I was thinking about that. Is a compact flash Ultra III card faster than a SATA disk? Cause we can always record to compact flash and also have an external USB or Firewire 500Gb HDD to backup the clips.

July 22nd, 2007, 04:56 AM	#217
Jose A. Garcia Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Sevilla (Spain) Posts: 439	Ok... I think LS-371 3.5" board is just perfect for our purposes. I'll buy one as soon as I have some extra money. I'm thinking about adding a T5600 Core2Duo Mobile 1,83Ghz processor, 1Gb RAM, SATA disk and we have to think of a way to add batteries. Adding the Innovatek LCD and a few more things we can have the camera ready to go for about 2000-2500euro all included.

July 22nd, 2007, 08:13 AM	#218
Igor Babic Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Zagreb, Croatia Posts: 171	Another LCD solution http://www.cappuccinopc.com/parts/mr-xe-700y.asp Power Supply http://www.cappuccinopc.com/power_battery.asp http://www.spectra.de/produktliste.c...ed%20Netzteile Mini Keyboards http://www.cappuccinopc.com/input_devices.asp FireWire miniPCI http://www.spectra.de/produktliste.c...dummy=1#113878 IDE to CF, powersupplys etc http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.14/.f http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/.f

July 22nd, 2007, 08:35 AM	#219
David Delaney Trustee Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Niagara Ontario Canada Posts: 1,121	This is a good monitor for the price. https://www.xenarcdirect.com/product...cat=249&page=1

July 22nd, 2007, 09:48 AM	#220
Igor Babic Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Zagreb, Croatia Posts: 171	Yes Xenarc is original one. Has anybody found something like that in 5.6" or 5.8" format? 7" is too big for handheld.

July 22nd, 2007, 12:05 PM	#222
Jose A. Garcia Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Sevilla (Spain) Posts: 439	That's exactly why I wanted a good sharp C Mount lens inside the camera attached to the board. Right now focusing is a bit difficult, even with a 24" lcd, but that's just because the lens that came with the board can't focus any sharper. We need everything inside the camera to be tack sharp. If we can get to that point, I think it will be much easier to focus with a 7" screen. By the way, I don't really think 7" is too large. We're talking about 2k filmmaking here. We're not building a handycam. We need to see what we're doing as clear as possible. Just take a look at the lcds they're using at RED or NOX... The nOX in fact has a 8.4" touchscreen lcd and it "just" shoots 2k.

July 22nd, 2007, 02:08 PM	#225
Jose A. Garcia Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Sevilla (Spain) Posts: 439	Well, I'm actually quite sure this is the board we need. It's just perfect. By the way, is it compatible with non-mobile core2duo processors? Those are a bit cheaper. If it is, what would be the difference between choosing a non-mobile processor and a mobile one?