Hello,
I am very new to this forum but I hope to find some guidance here from people way smarter than me. Also if I am hard to understand or don't make sense please tell me.
I am a student trying to develop a mobile device (as user friendly as possible) and while I have worked with Arduinos and RPIs before I am still new to figuring out how most of tech things work and how to use it properly so I am probably doing a lot of things that are inefficient.
In this project I want to have a camera stream a live video feed onto a small (5" or smaller) LCD display that is like a couple of meters away. Next to the camera are a couple of sensors being controlled by a seperate microcontroller which has to be able to be addressed (tell sensors to start measuring) by the device user through the LCD display. The device user should also be able to get a picture of the LCD screen with measurement results.
The way I am doing it right now is with a ESP32 Cam which streams the camera as MJPEG on a website which is hosted by that same ESP32 Cam as well. A microcontroller which is operating the sensors is connected to the ESP32 Cam and with XMLHttp requests I am able to start and poll measurements from the sensors with a button press on said webpage. Now if I want to display the webpage on an LCD I need a computer with an OS and a browser which is where I am using an RPI.
My problem now is that using a capable RPI (enough RAM and decent enough CPU [I am currently using a RPI 4 b with 2GBs]), a suitable touchscreen (has to be 5" to display video feed at framrate of more than 30fps) and a needed mobile power supply (3 A with 5V and high enough mAh) makes this project so much more expensive (at least 110$ for just the RPI, LCD and mobile power supply) which made me wonder if the way I am doing it is even really efficient in the first place. I am not sure how I would go about displaying the video feed on an LCD display (while still having a GUI with it to do stuff like starting a measurement for example) directly without making a website for the GUI as well. Like I said I am not super knowledgeable with all this but I want to learn because I find tinkering with this type of stuff on my own time super interesting.
Any guidance with what I can and should do differently is very much appreciated,
I am open to anything.
I am very new to this forum but I hope to find some guidance here from people way smarter than me. Also if I am hard to understand or don't make sense please tell me.
I am a student trying to develop a mobile device (as user friendly as possible) and while I have worked with Arduinos and RPIs before I am still new to figuring out how most of tech things work and how to use it properly so I am probably doing a lot of things that are inefficient.
In this project I want to have a camera stream a live video feed onto a small (5" or smaller) LCD display that is like a couple of meters away. Next to the camera are a couple of sensors being controlled by a seperate microcontroller which has to be able to be addressed (tell sensors to start measuring) by the device user through the LCD display. The device user should also be able to get a picture of the LCD screen with measurement results.
The way I am doing it right now is with a ESP32 Cam which streams the camera as MJPEG on a website which is hosted by that same ESP32 Cam as well. A microcontroller which is operating the sensors is connected to the ESP32 Cam and with XMLHttp requests I am able to start and poll measurements from the sensors with a button press on said webpage. Now if I want to display the webpage on an LCD I need a computer with an OS and a browser which is where I am using an RPI.
My problem now is that using a capable RPI (enough RAM and decent enough CPU [I am currently using a RPI 4 b with 2GBs]), a suitable touchscreen (has to be 5" to display video feed at framrate of more than 30fps) and a needed mobile power supply (3 A with 5V and high enough mAh) makes this project so much more expensive (at least 110$ for just the RPI, LCD and mobile power supply) which made me wonder if the way I am doing it is even really efficient in the first place. I am not sure how I would go about displaying the video feed on an LCD display (while still having a GUI with it to do stuff like starting a measurement for example) directly without making a website for the GUI as well. Like I said I am not super knowledgeable with all this but I want to learn because I find tinkering with this type of stuff on my own time super interesting.
Any guidance with what I can and should do differently is very much appreciated,
I am open to anything.
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