Wireless and CCTV megapixel digital camera for surveillance and unmanned air vehicles

• US 20080002045A1
• Filed: 12/06/2006
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/07/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alon Wallach
• Original Assignee: Alon Wallach
• Inventors: Wallach, Alon
• Granted Patent: US 8,223,213 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/311
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/185 from a mobile camera, e.g. for remote control

Abstract

A system for Unmanned Air Vehicles and security applications that enables the use of a megapixels commercial digital camera with high resolution stills picturing capability, integrated with a camera control interface unit, long range wireless analog video link or CCTV link having 5 MHz bandwidth, but still able to transmit the high resolution pictures in full, by breaking the megapixels stored picture of the digital camera to a multitude of “subpictures”, each limited in resolution and 5 Mhz bandwidth. The wireless received analog video “subpictures” stream feed a P.C with frame grabber and software that reconstruct the complete megapixels picture.

Claims

1. A digital megapixels video camera connected with its standard analog video output to the input of a standard analog video transmitter or standard analog video cable, and a controller that controls the above mentioned camera to take a picture in very high resolution and then send it over the said video link or cable in the form of series of analog video subpictures, each having a limited analog video bandwidth and number of lines matching the video link'"'"'s properties and limitations.

2. The digital video camera of claim 1 wherein the series of subpictures are each uniquely I.D. marked sequentially, either by some overlay contents or addition to each subpictures, an insert in its VBI (Vertical Blank Interval), in the audio channel of the video link or video cable, or in an auxiliary data channel. The I.D. is used to help and reconstruct the full high resolution picture.

3. A PC or any computing device with a video input that can grab the series of subpictures of claim 1, with the I.D. marks of claim 2 and reconstruct a high resolution picture, and show all or part of it on a VGA or other computer screen, with the original resolution that the digital camera of claim 1 allowed.

4. A system as outlined by claim 1, 2, and 3, while the digital camera of claim 1 is a high resolution digital CCD or CMOS picture sensor.

5. A system as outlined by claims 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 3 and 4 while the video signal is not a standard PAL or NTSC video signal, but rather a slow scan megapixel analog scan.

6. A system as outlined in claims 1 and 3, while the I.D. of claim 2 is not present, but the PC or computing device of claims 3 is extracting the I.D. using a relatively long intermission between the end of one series of subpictures and the next series of subpictures, as a means to reset an I.D. counter.

7. The digital camera of claim 1 or the picture sensor of claim 4, while the video link or cable of claim 1 is replaced by a digital or internet video link with limited bandwidth.