An IEEE 1394 - FireWire - based embedded video system for surveillance applications

In order to address the need for portable inexpensive systems for video surveillance, we built a computer vision system that provides digital video data transfer from a CCD camera using embedded software/hardware via the IEEE 1394 protocol, also known as FireWire or i.Link, and Ethernet TCP/IP interfaces. Controlled by an extended version of the IEEE 1394-based digital camera specification (DCAM), the system is made up of entirely open interfaces that provide many image resolutions and frame rates, and digital signal processing and compression capabilities. We present the design of the system and its performance on running a digital signal processing application. We also give details about the software and hardware architecture, as well as our directions for future research and development.