Raspberry PI Car Accessory

Car Accessory Ideas

I am thinking about the next raspberry pi based project for car accessory.

One of the key features are dashcam type of drive recording support.

I think this is very important feature especially when accident like car crash or brek-in happens. 

I have bought the following product from Xiaomi and this one is really good considering the low price.

YI 2.7" Screen Full HD 1080P60 165 Wide Angle Dashboard Camera

Thanks to DASHCAMTALK  site and they provide a great review of this product.

This feature requires video streaming, audio streaming, and storage management.

Can I mimic the similar features of this product using raspberry pi?

My guess is yes, although buying this product would be cheaper than DIY...

Well the point is to enjoy the project and learn something 😊

Luckily I have learned many from the previous blog, and streaming video and audio can be done.

Forget the quality for now... I am sure I can't exceed the actual product quality 😰

I can also add inertial sensors to detect the collision.

Maybe I can use the same sensor I used, BMI160 previous blog or BNO055  previous blog.

This sensor can trigger the recording and also provide the inertial data like angular velocity and acceleration.

Having GPS would also be helpful and I am sure there would be lots of information from all the DIY experts. I need to research that.

Since it is DIY, what else can I add or what else do I want??

Once I thought about message board on my rear window to show the other driver a message.

It is very simple message like "Thank you" or "Sorry" to show my quick response to the driver who gave me the space to change the lane or who got unhappy with my driving behavior.

I think this could be done by raspberry PI as well as long as I can get reasonable power, size, and price LED matrix board.

Maybe something like this work but might require multiple...

I would like to keep 5V power supply so that it is easier for the hardware integration.

Digital Flexible LED Matrix Panel DC5V

Well, it will not be cheap if I need to use 2-3 of these to expand the viewing range.

The another method is may be using HUD type of method using display panel, but this may cost as well. Using magnifying mirror with the small display might be also a candidate, but the viewing angle would be a problem. 

Any rate, maybe using LED matrix panel can be the first route.

I think it is also possible to add motor to rotate the camera angle remotely.

With the above panel, it could be very power hungry device... Need to control well.

Hmm... let's think more later.

Features

Okay now the summary of features.

• Video and audio recording using "picam + USB microphone" or "USB webcam"
• Format and resolution are up to the camera
• Video and audio streaming to smartphone
• It can be old android phone
• Video and audio playback from smartphone
• Detect collision and monitor the inertial data
• GPS data logging
• Message board with remote operation support
• TBD

Planning

I guess first thing is to review the old video and audio streaming project in the previous blog, and implement sensor data and others.

I wonder how long it takes to complete but it would be fun.

Thank you for reading!

I will update this project as I make progress.

                 

Raspberry PI Stereo Camera

Raspberry PI Stereo Camera

There are more demands on the stereo camera, I think.

I am not computer vision engineer but I hear people asking for the stereo camera.

You can get the USB stereo cameras but not many cameras are available for DIY people.

1.0 Megapixel Dual Lens Usb Camera Module with Two Megapixel Lens 

Then, I wondered if it is possible to do the stereo camera streaming using raspberry pi.

The raspberry pi camera module v2 has Sony image sensor and the performance is so nice.

The raspberry pi site has the comparison chart between camera module v1 and v2.

The camera module v2 supports 8M pixel resolution, 1080p@30, 720p@60, and 640 × 480p@60/@90. As an eye of the stereo camera, it has quite good spec.

Unfortunately, raspberry pi can only supports 1 camera module for now, so the potential solution to develop the stereo camera system is either using something like this.

Multi Camera Adapter Module

Thanks to ArduCam and they have great camera products. I have been using there products in my previous blogs here and here.

The above adapter is basically multiplexer and it can easily switch the multiple camera views.

I think it is great module for the camera surveillance projects or my car accessory projects here (in progress now).

However, I would like to try different method for this project which is using 2 raspberry pi and each raspberry pi use the 8MP camera module v2.

The reason why I wanted this is to record the 2 camera views simultaneously and maximize the image resolution and frames.

Using 2 Raspberry PI with Camera Module V2

For the first attempt, I came up with this method.

1. Add external button and wire the signal to both raspberry pi
2. Use the hardware interrupt to trigger the recording start event
3. Launch script to star the stream at the input trigger
1. The script just waits for camera recording until the input trigger is detected
4. Offline operation to merge 2 recorded video files

Synchronize the Frames from 2 Raspberry PI and Camera Module V2

There are another trick I did for this test which is to try synchronizing the 2 individual camera timing as much as possible.
What I did was to share the clock signals on the camera module v2.
Fortunately, the camera module use CMOS output clock device to feed the clock signal to the image sensor chip, so it was really easy to wire and share the 1 clock signal to the other.

Result
Here is the result. (Not great quality, sorry...)
The camera was not aligned well, but the shifted image is due to the left and right side camera view angle.

Thank you for reading!

I will update this project as I make progress.