Analysis of the Gameboy Camera frame Rate

The Gameboy camera is advertised as capbable of 30 fps. So the question is how can we obtain the frame rate. This little discourse attempts to answer that question.

The below is number of images captured during a 15 second interval. The first number is the exposure register setting. followed by total number of images taken and approximate frames per second (total/~fps)
Exposurerows dataFramesframes/second
112836724
1500128?10
6000128604
3200012890.6
1111505767
1500128018
60001724
320001140.9

Note, The exposure is determined by the register setting. It's minimum is 16 microseconds with a maximum a little over 1 second.

With a large exposure setting, about 99% of the time is spent in the exposure; thus, with very little time comparatively transmitting the image from camera to gbamera_buffer structure and thus very little improvement is possible--period. As the exposure time moves toward 0, then a lot of the CPU time is spent transmitting the image making shrinking the image portion actually improve performance, but I must emphasize, unless you are doing a lot of processing on the image or you do not need that portion of the image, then it would be better to capture the whole image because the CPU processing SHOULD be faster than the time capturing another subimage; i.e., you have to set up camera, wait for exposure, transmit subportion, etc all over again. Thus, all effort should be spent in getting a light source on the robot so it can minimize the exposure setting. As the chart shows, if the exposure can be set to under 1500, then this will improve you to over 10 fps with a whole image! One possible use of a subportion though, is since creating that bright is probably going to be high current unless we can focus it to one section of the image--where we will take a reading; thus cutting down our current use and optimizing the camera frame rate.

Conclusion

Conclusion is a mixed bag: on the negative side I was almost able to obtain the 30 fps, but only at the cost of a black image (exposure=0). On the positive side, I was able to obtain rates above 10 frames per second, but only with proper lighting. The 1500 value represents an attainable, but difficult light source. For example, full sunshine can meter well below 1000; the room at CSUF where the RSSC meets, meters at about 1600-1800; very close to the value. At home, I meter between 6000-32000.