Panoramic Camera | Enabling Immersive Video Capture through Eragon 820

An image is worth a thousand words. These powerful words cannot be truer in today’s age of visual data. Research says that our brain requires less functioning in order to process any image or visual content. In addition to being easier to comprehend, the impact of an image to deliver a message is more powerful and triggers emotions to store them in the long term memory.

Emphasis on visual data became evident as photography technology moved from analog to digital and with the arrival of smartphones with high-end cameras. This has led to today’s social media habits leaning towards platforms such as Instagram, SnapChat, Tumblr and Pinterest. But these superficial changes are just indicators of deeper transformations in camera and imaging technology.  The latest trend in this field is the Micro Camera Technology with a ~130º field of view without the distortion and other limitations typically associated with ultra-wide-angle or fisheye lens based systems. Conventional smartphone cameras capture 60º - 80º field where as Altia Systems’ PanaCast solution delivers a 5.5 Megapixel video stream with a ~130° field of view, with 3568 x 1536 pixels per frame, operating at 30 frames per second. This is possible by Panacast Computer Vision Engine (PCVE) software that integrates the company's real-time video stitching IP that runs on eInfochips’ Eragon 820 based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor to drive the newly-developed PanaCast micro camera module. The micro camera module consists of two standard 3 Megapixel smartphone cameras operated synchronously, with standard fields of view for each camera.

eInfochips’ Eragon product team has implemented Altia Systems’ image synchronization IP and performed image sensor tuning to deliver high-quality video capture in real-time from the micro camera module on the Eragon 820 development board. The dual ISP pipeline in the Snapdragon 820 processor, combined with the processing power of the Qualcomm® Adreno™ 530 GPU, is designed to support real-time stitching with low power consumption, in a miniaturized form factor scalable for high-volume applications.

This solution enables real-time immersive video capability along with real-time sensing and is designed to support cellular connectivity making it suitable for a variety of applications, including IoT, AR/VR, analytics, machine learning, automotive, UAV, sports/events broadcasting, safety & security, telemedicine. To know more about our Eragon solutions and product engineering services you can write to us at marketing@einfochips.com

About Author

Aarohi Desai is a Product and Practice Marketing Manager at eInfochips. She holds a Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech and was working with NVIDIA in Silicon Valley before joining eInfochips. Leveraging her technology domain and experience, she is now focusing on enabling embedded solutions based on Qualcomm Snapdragon Platforms at eInfochips.