I am having trouble interfacing a VC0706 Camera with only an AVR Microcontroller. I am using simple serial communication but the camera does not respond. I tried connecting it with a computer but still no response from the camera.
Moreover I am having difficulty in understanding the following:
Usualy, the connetion in serial problems are due to difference in speed communication, CRC, odd or even parity, etc. So check if the configuration are the same.
No, I don't think you can store one image in the SRAM of the microcontroler. If the image resolution is 640x480, then you will need at least 640*480=307200=307kb to store a black and white image. It is larger than the SRAM of the microcontroler (2kb).
I is also a large memory for a single microcontroler, then you'll need to add an external RAM, as large as the microcontroller's pins allow addressing.
Hope I could help you.
SPI/UART interfaces are only for controlling VC0706 . You should read digital video from CCIR656 output channel(8/16 databits, 1/2 frame syncs, pixel clock etc), you can convert to analog video using any video encoder like ADV7171.
The block diagram says it is not having internal image sensor, you should interface an external image sensor to it again through CCIR656 interface or analog input to video decoder like ADV7184 and then digital input video to it's inputs..
The image will be streamed over serial to your MCU as a JPEG image. And an ATmega32 (like the ATmega328p in the Arduino) only has 2K of SRAM, nowhere near enough to hold even a QQVGA (160x120) image.
With some savvy coding you might be able to decode the image on the fly if you are looking just for specific pixels, but since JPEGs are stored in "ZigZag" order it will be tricky.
Most people just stream the image directly to SD and don't analyze the image. Cameras such as the OV7670 are better suited to direct access by the microcontroller, but the image will still be too large to store in memory.
Even an ATmega1284p which has a whopping 16K of SRAM could only hold a QQQVGA (80x60 565RGB) image.
If you are looking to process images in memory, I would recommend looking at beefier microcontrollers, like the xmega384 (32K), the pic32 (up to 128K), or ARM microcontrollers (up to 262K IIRC). One option to consider is the Arduino Due which has an ARM Cortex-M3 MCU and 96K of ram which is enough for a 320x240 greyscale (or indexed color) image.
