The OpenMV Cam M7 board is our next generation OpenMV Cam. It features 1.5-2X the processing power, 2X the RAM, and 2X the flash of the previous OpenMV Cam. In particular, the increased amount of RAM means we have space to JPEG compress images at a much higher quality. Additionally, the MicroPython heap comes with 64KB more space so you can actually create large image copies now. The M7 is a superscaler processor capable of executing 1-2 instructions per clock. So, algorithm speed-ups will vary. But, it's by default faster at 216 MHz than the M4 core at 168 MHz.

In addition to the processor being better the USB connector now has through-hole stress relief pads so you can't rip it off. We also added another I/O pin and exposed the OV7725's frame sync pin so you can sync up two cam's video streams. To make room for more I/O pins we moved all the debug pins to a special debug header. The debug header is mainly for our internal use to test and program OpenMV Cams but you can hookup an ARM Debugger to it too. Other than that we switched out the IR LEDs for surface mount ones. This change along with a few other fixes will allow us to offer the OpenMV Cam at $65 retail.

But, if you pre-order today you can get the new OpenMV Cam for $55. We'll be taking pre-orders for the next 2 months. We need to add $15K to our coffers to afford production of the new board in a 1K+ build run. So, this means we need about 300+ preorders. If you want to see the OpenMV Cam project move forwards please pre-order the new OpenMV Cam M7.

Now, if we can get a lot more sales than just 300 pre-orders this will allow use to lower the prices for shields too which are built in 100 units quantities. Please go on a shopping storm and let everyone else know about it too! Free free to add anything else in our store to your cart and we'll ship them all together.

Note that the final board will be black. The images are from our prototype. Assuming no obstacles we'll start manufacturing OpenMV Cam M7's at the start of February and they should start shipping in March and we'll continue shipping thereafter.

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The OpenMV Cam is a small, low power, microcontroller board which allows you to easily implement applications using machine vision in the real-world. You program the OpenMV Cam in high level Python scripts (courtesy of the MicroPython Operating System) instead of C/C++. This makes it easier to deal with the complex outputs of machine vision algorithms and working with high level data structures. But, you still have total control over your OpenMV Cam and its I/O pins in Python. You can easily trigger taking pictures and video on external events or execute machine vision algorithms to figure out how to control your I/O pins.

The OpenMV Cam features:

• The STM32F765VI ARM Cortex M7 processor running at 216 MHz with 512KB of RAM and 2 MB of flash. All I/O pins output 3.3V and are 5V tolerant. The processor has the following I/O interfaces:
  • A full speed USB (12Mbs) interface to your computer. Your OpenMV Cam will appear as a Virtual COM Port and a USB Flash Drive when plugged in.
  • A μSD Card socket capable of 100Mbs reads/writes which allows your OpenMV Cam to record video and easy pull machine vision assets off of the μSD card.
  • A SPI bus that can run up to 54Mbs allowing you to easily stream image data off the system to either the LCD Shield, the WiFi Shield, or another microcontroller.
  • An I2C Bus, CAN Bus, and an Asynchronous Serial Bus (TX/RX) for interfacing with other microcontrollers and sensors.
  • A 12-bit ADC and a 12-bit DAC.
  • Three I/O pins for servo control.
  • Interrupts and PWM on all I/O pins (there are 10 I/O pins on the board).
  • And, an RGB LED and two high power 850nm IR LEDs.
• The OV7725 image sensor is capable of taking 640x480 8-bit Grayscale images or 320x240 16-bit RGB565 images at 30 FPS. Your OpenMV Cam comes with a 2.8mm lens on a standard M12 lens mount. If you want to use more specialized lenses with your OpenMV Cam you can easily buy and attach them yourself.

For more information about the OpenMV Cam please see our documentation.

Applications

The OpenMV Cam can be used for the following things currently (more in the future):

• Frame Differencing
  • You can use Frame Differencing on your OpenMV Cam to detect motion in a scene by looking at what's changed. Frame Differencing allows you to use your OpenMV Cam for security applications.
• Color Tracking
  • You can use your OpenMV Cam to detect up to 32 colors at a time in an image (realistically you'd never want to find more than 4) and each color can have any number of distinct blobs. Your OpenMV Cam will then tell you the position, size, centroid, and orientation of each blob. Using color tracking your OpenMV Cam can be programmed to do things like tracking the sun, line following, target tracking, and much, much, more.
• Marker Tracking
  • You can use your OpenMV Cam to detect groups of colors instead of independent colors. This allows you to create color makers (2 or more color tags) which can be put on objects allowing your OpenMV Cam to understand what the tagged objects are.
• Face Detection
  • You can detect Faces with your OpenMV Cam (or any generic object). Your OpenMV Cam can process Haar Cascades to do generic object detection and comes with a built-in Frontal Face Cascade and Eye Haar Cascade to detect faces and eyes.
• Eye Tracking
  • You can use Eye Tracking with your OpenMV Cam to detect someone's gaze. You can then, for example, use that to control a robot. Eye Tracking detects where the pupil is looking versus detecting if there's an eye in the image.
• Optical Flow
  • You can use Optical Flow to detect translation of what your OpenMV Cam is looking at. For example, you can use Optical Flow on a quad-copter to determine how stable it is in the air.
• Edge/Line Detection
  • You can preform edge detection via either the Canny Edge Detector algorithm or simple high-pass filtering followed by thresholding. After you have a binary image you can then use the Hough Detector to find all the lines in the image. With edge/line detection you can use your OpenMV Cam to easily detect the orientation of objects.
• Template Matching
  • You can use template matching with your OpenMV Cam to detect when a translated pre-saved image is in view. For example, template matching can be used to find fiducials on a PCB or read known digits on a display.
• Image Capture
  • You can use the OpenMV Cam to capture up to 320x240 RGB565 (or 640x480 Grayscale) BMP/JPG/PPM/PGM images. You directly control how images are captured in your Python script. Best of all, you can preform machine vision functions and/or draw on frames before saving them.
• Video Recording
  • You can use the OpenMV Cam to record up to 320x240 RGB565 (or 640x480 Grayscale) MJPEG video or GIF images. You directly control how each frame of video is recorded in your Python script and have total control on how video recording starts and finishes. And, like capturing images, you can preform machine vision functions and/or draw on video frames before saving them.

Finally, all the above features can be mixed and matched in your own custom application along with I/O pin control to talk to the real world.

Pinout

Schematic & Datasheets

• OpenMV Cam Schematic (.pdf)
  • Eagle Schematic (.sch)
  • Eagle Board (.brd)
• Processor Datasheet: STM32F765VI (.pdf)
  • Reference Manual (.pdf)
• Camera Datasheet: OV7725 (.pdf)
• Regulator Datasheet: BD33IAWEFJ (.pdf)

Dimensions

Specifications

Processor	ARM® 32-bit Cortex®-M7 CPU w/ Double Precision FPU 216 MHz (462 DMIPS) Core Mark Score: 1082 (compare w/ Raspberry Pi Zero: 2060)
RAM Layout	128KB .DATA/.BSS/Heap/Stack 384KB Frame Buffer/Stack (512KB Total)
Flash Layout	32KB Bootloader 96KB Embedded Flash Drive 1920KB Firmware (2MB Total)
Supported Image Formats	Grayscale RGB565 JPEG
Maximum Supported Resolutions	Grayscale: 640x480 and under RGB565: 320x240 and under Grayscale JPEG: 640x480 and under RGB565 JPEG: 640x480 and under
Lens Info	Focal Length: 2.8mm Aperture: F2.0 Format: 1/3" Angle (Field-of-View): 115° Mount: M12*0.5 IR Cut Filter: 650nm (removable)
Electrical Info	All pins are 5V tolerant with 3.3V output. All pins can sink or source up to 25mA. P6 is not 5V tolerant in ADC or DAC mode. Up to 120mA may be sinked or sourced in total between all pins. VIN may be between 3.6V and 5V. Do not draw more than 250mA from your OpenMV Cam's 3.3V rail.
Weight	16g
Length	45mm
Width	36mm
Height	30mm

Power Consumption

Idle - No μSD Card	110mA @ 3.3V
Idle - μSD Card	110mA @ 3.3V
Active - No μSD Card	190mA @ 3.3V
Active - μSD Card	200mA @ 3.3V

Temperature Range