Image acquisition from CMOS Active Pixel Sensor using RISC processor

CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) are widely prevalent in applications ranging from cell-phone cameras to endoscopes. In this paper, a low-power high performance CMOS APS interface is designed and implemented. This interface helps in easy acquisition of images from OV6620, a CMOS APS, using an ARM7 based 16-bit/32-bit microcontroller LPC2148. The microcontroller first initializes the APS and then proceeds with acquiring images as per the user requirements using Serial Camera Control Bus (SCCB) interface. Finally, the microcontroller sends the acquired image to the computer through serial communication interface. The graphical user interface provided to the user for controlling various functions of the APS like exposure control, gamma, windowing, etc., also displays the image. The hardware and software to implement the above are designed.