JP2012203707A - Drive recorder and drive recorder system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a drive recorder and a drive recorder system for recording video data of a travelling vehicle.SOLUTION: An image processing part (120) converts signals obtained by a camera (12) into video data and records the video data in a primary memory (131). When an impact detection part (190) detects impact which occurs at a vehicle, a control part (160) starts copying the video data for a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time, from the primary memory (131) to a secondary memory (132), and after the video data for the predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is copied to the secondary memory (132), the control part copies the video data to a non-volatile memory (30).

Description

  The present invention relates to a drive recorder and a drive recorder system for recording video data of a running vehicle.

  A drive recorder that records traveling data of a traveling vehicle together with image data is mounted on the vehicle.

  As such a drive recorder, vehicle situation information collecting means for collecting vehicle situation information of the vehicle during traveling, impact detection means for detecting a predetermined impact generated in the vehicle, and the impact detection means detects the impact. There is disclosed a drive recorder having vehicle status information storage means for storing vehicle status information collected by the vehicle status information collection means.

JP 2008-117137 A

  In a conventional drive recorder, when an impact is detected from video data photographed by a camera and constantly recorded, video data before and after the impact is recorded in a storage device such as a memory card. If there are a plurality of cameras, a writing process corresponding to the number of the plurality of cameras occurs. In addition, the writing process to the memory card takes a long time compared with a memory such as an internal RAM.

  In such a conventional drive recorder, until the process of writing the video data when the impact is detected to the memory card is finished, another time when the impact is detected, the video data corresponding to the impact cannot be written. There was a problem that occurred.

  The present invention has been made in view of such problems, and a drive recorder capable of recording video data even when another impact is detected before the video data writing process is completed after the impact is detected. It is another object of the present invention to provide a drive recorder system.

  A drive recorder according to the present invention includes a camera that acquires a video signal during vehicle travel, an image processing unit that converts the video signal acquired by the camera into video data, and temporarily records the video data converted by the image processing unit. Memory, a non-volatile memory that records video data recorded in the memory, an impact detection unit that detects an impact that has occurred in the vehicle, and a memory that detects when the impact detection unit detects an impact that has occurred in the vehicle. A controller that copies the recorded video data to a non-volatile memory, the memory includes a primary memory and a secondary memory, and the image processor converts the signal acquired by the camera into video data and performs primary processing. The controller records the video data for a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time from the primary memory to the secondary memory when the impact detection unit detects the impact generated on the vehicle. Started, the secondary memory, after the image data for a predetermined time before and after the shock occurrence time is copied, the image data, characterized by copying the non-volatile memory.

  In addition, the drive recorder system according to the present invention records a camera that acquires a video signal when the vehicle is running, an image processing unit that converts the video signal acquired by the camera into video data, and video data converted by the image processing unit. A memory including a primary memory and a secondary memory, a non-volatile memory for recording video data recorded in the secondary memory, an impact detection unit for detecting an impact generated in the vehicle, and the impact detection unit in the vehicle When the impact that has occurred is detected, the video data for a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is copied from the primary memory to the secondary memory, and the video data for the predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is stored in the secondary memory. After the video is copied, the video recorder recorded in the non-volatile memory is played back, and a drive recorder including a control unit that copies the video data to the non-volatile memory. And an image reproducing apparatus that is characterized in that it comprises.

  According to the present invention, a primary memory and a secondary memory are provided, video data obtained from a camera is recorded in the primary memory, video data at the time of impact is copied to the secondary memory, and the copied video signal is recorded. When an event such as an impact occurs continuously, it is not necessary to wait for the end of writing to the primary memory or the end of writing to the non-volatile memory. Can be recorded without interruption.

It is explanatory drawing of the drive recorder system containing the drive recorder of this invention of embodiment of this invention. It is a functional block diagram of the drive recorder of the embodiment of the present invention. It is a flowchart of the process of the control part of embodiment of this invention. It is explanatory drawing of the primary memory and secondary memory of embodiment of this invention.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of a drive recorder system 1 including a drive recorder 10 of the present invention.

  The drive recorder system 1 includes a drive recorder 10 mounted on a vehicle 11, a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as a PC) 20 installed in a business office, and a memory card 30 that records data acquired by the drive recorder 10. Is done.

  The drive recorder 10 acquires travel data (for example, vehicle speed, engine speed, latitude, longitude, etc.) from the vehicle 11 and records them at predetermined intervals together with the date and time. The drive recorder 10 is connected to a camera 12 and records image data taken by the camera 12. The travel data and the image data are recorded on the memory card 30.

  The drive recorder 10 includes a memory card interface 150 that writes and reads data to and from the memory card 30 with the memory card 30 inserted, and a record button 180 that artificially records image data on the memory card 30. Is provided.

  The PC 20 includes a memory card interface 21 that writes data to and reads data from the memory card 30 with the memory card 30 inserted, a display unit 22 that includes a liquid crystal display that can display image data, and the like. And an input unit 23 including a keyboard and a mouse that can input instructions from.

  The memory card 30 is configured to be readable and writable by the memory card interface 150 and the memory card interface 21. The memory card 30 is a so-called nonvolatile memory that semipermanently retains data written by the memory card interface 150 and the memory card interface 21, and is a flash memory such as SD (Source Digital) or CF (Compact Flash). A card is used.

  FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of the drive recorder 10 according to the embodiment of the present invention.

  The drive recorder 10 performs A / D conversion on a plurality of video signals received from the camera 12 and outputs them as video data, and encodes video data output from the A / D conversion unit 110. The image processing unit 120 converts the video data into a format that can be recorded as video data, the memory 130 that records the video data converted by the image processing unit 120, and the video data recorded in the memory 130 is recorded in the memory card 30. And a memory card interface 150. The encoding process performed by the image processing unit 120 uses a known technique such as JPEG, for example.

  The drive recorder 10 includes an event detection unit 190. The event detection unit 190 includes an acceleration sensor, and impacts the vehicle when the acceleration detected by the acceleration sensor exceeds a predetermined threshold (for example, when the longitudinal G or lateral G becomes 0.8 G or more). It is determined that has been added and an event is detected. The detected event is notified to the control unit 160.

  The memory 130 includes a primary memory 131 and a secondary memory 132. In these, one memory 130 is divided into a plurality of areas by address allocation, and each is set as a primary memory 131 and a secondary memory 132. Note that the primary memory 131 and the secondary memory 132 may be configured by a plurality of memories.

  The control unit 160 controls operations of these units. In particular, the control unit 160 executes processing for recording video data recorded in the memory 130 on the memory card 30 via the memory card interface 150, as will be described later.

  In addition, the control unit 160 may include an interface with the vehicle, obtain travel data (vehicle speed, acceleration, etc.), and record it in the memory card 30 together with the video data.

  Next, the operation of the drive recorder 10 configured as described above will be described.

  In the drive recorder 10, the video signal acquired by the camera 12 is converted into video data by the A / D conversion unit 110 and the image processing unit 120 and sequentially recorded in the primary memory 131 of the memory 130. Here, when an event occurrence such as an impact is detected by the event detection unit 190, the control unit 160 determines a predetermined time (for example, 12 seconds before and after the event occurrence time) from the video data recorded in the primary memory 131. 8 seconds later, a total of 20 seconds) is extracted and recorded in the memory card 30 which is a nonvolatile memory.

  In the process of the control unit 160, when an event occurrence is detected again by the event detection unit 190 when the video data at a predetermined time before and after the event occurrence time is recorded in the memory card 30, a write process is performed. Due to the waiting time, problems such as the case where the video signal acquired by the camera 12 cannot be converted into video data or the data cannot be recorded from the primary memory 131 to the memory card 30 may occur.

  In order to prevent this problem, it is conceivable to use the memory card 30 having a higher writing speed. However, not only the cost increases, but the waiting time cannot be completely eliminated. In addition, it is conceivable to reduce the size and the frame rate of the video data to reduce the data amount, but the sharpness of the video is lowered and the evidence is lowered.

  Therefore, in the embodiment of the present invention, the waiting time for data writing processing is eliminated by the following processing, and even when events occur continuously, all video data corresponding to each event occurrence can be recorded. Configured to be possible.

  FIG. 3 is a flowchart of video data writing processing executed by the control unit 160 of the present embodiment.

  When the control unit 160 detects that the operation of the vehicle 11 has started, the control unit 160 starts the processing according to this flowchart. In addition, the control part 160 detects having started the driving | operation of the vehicle 11, when a vehicle speed exceeds 0 [km / h], for example.

  First, the control unit 160 determines whether or not the memory card 30 is inserted into the memory card interface 150 (step S10). If it is determined that the memory card is not inserted, video data or the like cannot be recorded, so a warning such as an alarm is reported to the driver (step S20), and the processing according to this flowchart is temporarily terminated.

  If it is determined that the memory card 30 is inserted in the memory card interface 150, the control unit 160 sequentially records the video signal acquired from the camera 12 in the primary memory 131 of the memory 130 as video data (step S30). .

  As described above, the video signal acquired by the camera 12 is converted into video data by the A / D conversion unit 110 and converted into a predetermined encoding method by the image processing unit 120.

  In the present embodiment, the image processing unit 120 generates 30 still image data per second and writes the still image data in the primary memory 131. That is, the image processing unit 120 performs a writing process for each frame of still image data every 33 ms.

  Next, the control unit 160 determines whether or not there is an event occurrence notification from the event detection unit 190 (step S40). If there is no notification of event occurrence, this step is repeated until notification is received.

  When an event occurrence notification is received from the event detection unit 190, the control unit 160 determines from the video data recorded in the primary memory 131 a predetermined time before and after the time at which the event occurrence was detected (12 seconds before, after 8 seconds) of video data is extracted, and a process of copying the extracted video data to the secondary memory 132 is executed. Specifically, the following control is performed.

  As described above, the image processing unit 120 executes a process of writing still image data every 33 ms (step S50). At the timing when one still image data writing process is completed by the image processing unit 120 (step S60), the control unit 160 is 12 seconds before the next still image data writing process occurs. Is copied to the secondary memory 132 (step S70).

  Since the writing process by the image processing unit 120 performs the encoding process of the video data, the processing time for the image processing unit 120 to encode is longer than the time for the image processing unit 120 to write the video data to the primary memory 131. . On the other hand, the copying of data from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132 is completed at a high speed by performing direct memory access (DMA) transfer. Therefore, during the writing process performed by the image processing unit 120 every 33 ms, the control unit 160 can copy a plurality of still image data from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132.

  The control part 160 starts the process which concerns on these steps S50-S70, when the notification of event generation | occurrence | production is received. By repeating this process, all the still image data included in the video data from 12 seconds before the occurrence of the event to 8 seconds after the occurrence of the event is copied from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132.

  The control unit 160 determines whether or not all the video data has been copied from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132 for each of the processes of steps S50 to S70 (step S80). If all the video data has not been copied from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132, the process returns to step S50, and the processes of steps S50 to S70 are repeated.

  When it is determined that all the still image data included in the video data from 12 seconds before the event occurrence to 8 seconds after the event occurrence has been copied from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132, the control unit 160 The video data recorded in the secondary memory 132 is written to the memory card 30 via the memory card interface 150 (step S90).

  In the process of step S90, for example, it is preferable that the memory 130 is configured to be able to perform a read process from the memory interface 150 simultaneously with a write process from the image processing unit 120. For example, a DRAM (Dynamic RAM) configured so that the write data string and the read data string can be individually accessed can be used.

  Through the processing as described above, only video data before and after an event occurrence can be extracted from the primary memory 131 and written to the memory card 30 even during video data recording.

  FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing the primary memory 131 and the secondary memory 132 of the memory 130 of the present invention.

  As described above, the image processing unit 120 generates one still image data every 33 ms, and video data as a moving image is converted by continuing this data. In FIG. 4, video data to be converted by the image processing unit 120 is shown at 1 second intervals.

  Here, when an event such as an impact is detected by the event detection unit 190, the control unit 160 records video data for a total of 20 seconds, 12 seconds before the event detection and 8 seconds after the event detection, on the memory card 30. Execute the process.

  When an event occurrence is notified, the image processing unit 120 executes a process of writing still image data of 30 frames per second from the event occurrence time to the primary memory 131 every 33 ms.

  In between the processing of every 33 ms, the control unit 160 converts the video data recorded 12 seconds before the event occurrence time from the video data recorded in the primary memory 131 from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132. Start copying. Copy processing from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132 is executed faster than processing performed by the image processing unit every 33 ms by direct memory access transfer.

  This process is repeated, and when the image processing unit 120 writes corresponding video data to the primary memory 8 seconds after the event detection, the control unit 160 stores the corresponding video data 8 seconds after the event detection in the primary memory 131. Can be copied to the secondary memory 132, even if another event is detected after 8 seconds from the event detection, the video data of 20 seconds corresponding to the other event is again transferred from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory. It is possible to copy to 132.

  Specifically, if there is processing capability to copy video data (600 frames) for 20 seconds including the event detection time from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132 between 8 seconds after the event detection, Even when the image data is continuously generated, the image data can be recorded on the memory card 30 without waiting for the copy processing of the video data.

  As described above, in the embodiment of the present invention, the camera 12 that acquires the video signal when the vehicle 11 travels, the image processing unit 120 that converts the video signal acquired by the camera 12 into video data, and the image processing unit 120 include A memory 130 that temporarily records the converted video data, a memory card 30 that is a non-volatile memory that records the video data recorded in the memory 130, and an impact detection unit that detects an impact generated in the vehicle 11. The event detection unit 190 and a control unit 160 that copies video data recorded in the memory 130 to a memory card when the event detection unit 190 detects an impact generated in the vehicle 11 are configured.

  The memory 130 includes a primary memory 131 and a secondary memory 132. The image processing unit 120 converts the signal acquired by the camera 12 into video data and records it in the primary memory 131. The control unit 160 includes an event detection unit. When 190 detects an impact generated in the vehicle 11, copying of video data for a predetermined time (for example, 12 seconds before and 8 seconds after) from the primary memory 131 to the secondary memory 132 is started. Then, after the video data for a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is copied to the secondary memory 132, the video data is copied to the memory card 30.

  In this way, the primary memory 131 and the secondary memory 132 are provided, the video data acquired from the camera 12 is recorded in the primary memory 131, and the video data at the time of occurrence of the impact is copied to the secondary memory 132 and copied. By configuring the recorded video signal in the memory card 30 or the like, even when events such as impacts occur continuously, the video data at the time of the event occurrence can be recorded without interruption.

  In addition, since the data format that the image processing unit 120 records in the primary memory 131 is the JPEG format that is still image data, a clear video can be recorded without increasing the data amount of the video data.

  Since the video data is copied by direct memory access transfer between the primary memory 131 and the secondary memory 132 of the memory 130, the data recorded in the primary memory 131 is copied to the secondary memory 132 at high speed. And no waiting time for the writing process.

  In this embodiment, an example in which one camera 12 is mounted is shown. A plurality of cameras may be provided. By setting the areas of the primary memory 131 and the secondary memory 132 corresponding to each of the plurality of cameras 12, the processing as described above can be performed.

  It goes without saying that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and includes various modifications and improvements that can be made within the scope of the technical idea.

1 Drive Recorder System 10 Drive Recorder 11 Vehicle 12 Camera 20 PC
110 A / D conversion unit 120 Image processing unit 130 Memory 131 Primary memory 132 Secondary memory 150 Memory card interface 160 Control unit 180 Record button 190 Event detection unit (impact detection unit)

Claims (4)

A camera that acquires a video signal when the vehicle is running;
An image processing unit for converting a video signal acquired by the camera into video data;
A memory for temporarily recording video data converted by the image processing unit;
A non-volatile memory for recording video data recorded in the memory;
An impact detector for detecting an impact generated in the vehicle;
A controller that copies video data recorded in the memory to the nonvolatile memory when the impact detector detects an impact generated in the vehicle;
With
The memory includes a primary memory and a secondary memory,
The image processing unit converts the signal acquired by the camera into the video data and records it in the primary memory,
The controller is
When the impact detection unit detects an impact generated in the vehicle, it starts copying video data of a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time from the primary memory to the secondary memory,
The drive recorder, wherein the video data is copied to the non-volatile memory after the video data of a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is copied to the secondary memory.   The drive recorder according to claim 1, wherein the image processing unit records a video signal acquired by the camera as a JPEG image for each predetermined unit time.   3. The drive recorder according to claim 1, wherein the control unit performs direct memory access between the primary memory and the secondary memory to copy video data. A camera that acquires a video signal when the vehicle travels, an image processing unit that converts the video signal acquired by the camera into video data, and a primary memory and a secondary memory that record the video data converted by the image processing unit A memory comprising: a non-volatile memory that records video data recorded in the secondary memory; an impact detection unit that detects an impact generated in the vehicle; and the impact detection unit detects an impact generated in the vehicle Sometimes, copying of video data for a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is started from the primary memory to the secondary memory, and the video data for a predetermined time before and after the impact occurrence time is copied to the secondary memory. A drive recorder comprising: a controller that copies the video data to the non-volatile memory;
An image reproducing device for reproducing the video data recorded in the nonvolatile memory;
A drive recorder system comprising:

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