Daughterboards speeds DSP applications development

Kane Computing has recently signed an agreement to become the main international distributor for Bitec's DSP daughterboards.

Kane Computing has recently signed an agreement to become the main international distributor for Bitec's DSP daughterboards.

Bitec, a Texas Instruments third party partner, has created a number of daughterboards for use with TI DSP starter kits (DSKs).

Now the company has partnered with Kane Computing, which will be publicising, marketing and selling Bitec's products worldwide (except Taiwan and Korea).

Bitec chose Kane because of its unique position and reputation for selling and supporting TI development tools, and its long relationship with Spectrum Digital - the largest manufacturer of TI DSKs.

Current products being sold by Kane include the unique DSKCam which is a daughtercard with onboard CMOS camera, Ethernet interface, RS232 serial port and optional wireless LAN (Wi-Fi).

The board contains a 6Mbit frame buffer with a maximum colour camera resolution of 640 x 480 (VGA).

Based on the Omnivision OV7620 CMOS sensor, the camera contains enhanced functions for windowing, filtering and colour balance.

An onboard serial port based on the 16C550 UART permits up to 1Mbit/s transfer rate for connection to PC or other hosts via a 9-way D-type connector in RS232.

The camera head can be mounted horizontally, vertically or remotely on a short ribbon cable.

The card is easily programmed and is shipped with an H263 streaming example and simple web server application.

Examples are also included to allow rapid application development.

Another popular product is the DSKinet an embedded TCP/IP Ethernet daughtercard based on the WizNET W3100.

This includes a royalty free hardware TCP/IP stack, removing any DSP processing overhead.

The device handles TCP, UDP, IP, ICMP, ARP/RARP and raw MAC and DLC protocols with extended protocols such as DHCP and SMTP etc easily accommodate in software.

The WizNET API has been integrated into the DSP/BIOS operating system to ease development.

Inclusion of TCP/IP enables the DSKCam to be used as the basis of net attached smart camera and VOIP projects.

These daughterboards are compatible with C6416 DSK, C6713 DSK, C6211 DSK, C6711 DSK, C5510 DSK and C5416 DSK.

The wireless LAN versions have the same functions as the baseline products and allows users to develop smart camera technology over a wireless link.

Applications are very varied, particularly as the Flash programming functionality of the DSK board allows stand-alone applications to be implemented at a fraction of the cost currently available on the smart camera market.

By using the DSK's onboard digital and analogue I/O a complete high-performance, comprehensive machine vision controller can be built and installed.

Machine vision, video phones, remote image sensing, surveillance systems, biometrics, image recognition, stand-alone smart cameras are just some of the areas DSKCam can be used.

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