Raspberry Pi Forums

hi

i would like to capture the output of my videocamera via hdmi by the raspberry and forward via lan/wlan to a computer and display it

is the raspberry pi capeable of doing so?

thank you

Short answer:
NO.

Intermediate answer:
NO, the HDMI port on a PI is strictly an output port, so the fact that a PI has a "HDMI port" doesn't mean you can connect it to a camera.

Long Answer:
A small maybe, but its along shot. No way to use the HDMI port, but the PI has other ports, most obvious solution would be the USB port to connect to an USB video grabber, BUT: You will need a video capture USB device with built video compression, as a camera generates an enormous amount of data, far to much to pipe through even an USB 2.0 port, so it has to be compressed with a video codec inside the video grabber, before there is even a chance to send the video data over any USB port. BUT: the same USB port also is used to connect to the LAN, so that would halve the capacity of the USB link, plus the PI isn't built to support heavy USB traffic.

A possible alternative:
The Raspberry PI foundation is busy designing a camera module, which connects directly to a connector controlled by the GPU of the PI, this camera module will come with software to do on the fly video compression (or at last photo compression) of the pictures, without using USB, the resulting data can be sent to the LAN. But before you ask, no you cannot input your camera signal to the camera module.

A more realistic solution:
Use a webcam, which connects with USB and creates relatively low amounts of data, you still have the problem that you will need a Linux driver, ported to ARM6 code for the PI, but that is true for the first solution too.

thank you for your answer
i will do some research about it. very interesting

What is the equivalent video rate for the pi's usb port? My 1280x1024 webcam will only work in motion at 128x160... )-: