November 2016
I come from a TV engineering background, so I know I am asking for a lot. This is a very preliminary step in a design process, so I know it may go nowhere.
What I want to do is simultaneously view a small object/area (~ 1/4”) from two angles that are 90 degrees apart. Imagine a straight pin stuck into a board. I want to have magnified views of that point from the front and one side at the same time. These views will be at an angle above the board — perhaps 20 to 30 degrees — but they will be 90 degrees apart as viewed from above.
One way that I can think of doing this would be to use two of those small video cameras that are widely available for under $50. I do not need color images; black and white would be just fine. Two monitors would be too much, so I need a way of combining the two unsynchronized video signals to be displayed on a single screen, side by side.
What I am looking for is a combination of a frame synchronizer and a special effects generator that can do a split screen in one or a set of chips. I would think that anything current would be digital in nature, but an analog circuit would also be acceptable. Does anyone know of such a chip or set of chips?
Relatively inexpensive video surveillance systems can display multiple images on a single monitor, so there must be something out there. Of course, price is an important consideration. I would like to keep the entire project to under $200.
The only other alternative I can think of is to use mirrors to combine the two images optically and use a single camera, but that also has a lot of complications and expenses.
Please log in to post an answer.
Why not just get an inexpensive 4 channel video surveillance box? Some can be bought without a hard disk, making them less costly.
