[mdlug] Raspberry Pinewood Derby

[Dan Pritts]

On Mar 10, 2014, at 12:44 PM, Ingles, Raymond <Raymond.Ingles at compuware.com> wrote:
> 
> If anyone has any tips or suggestions for how to improve this, in particular how to get more FPS out of it, I'd be interested.

Are you confident that the captured video is really 75fps?  Or are frames getting dropped at input time?

If they’re getting dropped at input time, storage is probably the bottleneck, although it could just be the CPU. CPU is easy enough to observe.  If storage, if you can use a faster sd card or thumb drive you may get better results.  

If it’s recording ok but not playing OK I don’t have any particular solution to suggest, other than making sure that whatever player you end up with is fully optimized for the Pi's video chip.  So if, e.g., vlc has better pi support, you might go that way instead.   Maybe try mythTV.  

The other obvious solution is to use some sort of “real” computer.  An early intel “core” or core2, or similar vintage machine, is cheap enough and has pretty capable hardware.  Doesn’t have the fun hack factor of the pi, but hey, give it a shot.  

Alternately, maybe a beagle bone.  Interesting comparison of pi and beagle here:
http://makezine.com/magazine/how-to-choose-the-right-platform-raspberry-pi-or-beaglebone-black/

Summary, both are nice, Pi has a better video chip but the beagle-black has a better cpu.  if your video playback is not benefiting from the video chip (i’m guessing it isn’t, in your current configuration), the beagle may work better.

Hope this helps.

danno