Hey everyone, Sarah here from the board level cameras team—so you’re probably wondering, do our board level cameras actually support image compression? It’s one of the most common questions I get from engineers, product managers, and small business owners hitting me up through our support line, and honestly, it makes total sense. When you’re designing everything from compact IoT devices to industrial inspection systems, every inch of space and every byte of data counts. Let’s cut through the jargon and break this down like we chat over coffee, no stuffy white papers required. Board Level Cameras
First off, let’s get one thing straight: board level cameras aren’t just the tiny, basic sensors you might find in a old webcam from 10 years ago. We build ours to be bread-and-butter for embedded systems—they mount directly to a PCB, no bulky case needed, so they’re perfect for where space is non-negotiable. And yeah, compression is baked into most of our models, but not in the one-size-fits-all way you might think. A lot of people assume compression is just a “yes or no” toggle, but it’s way more nuanced than that, and that’s where the magic (and the usefulness) kicks in.
Let’s start with why you’d even care about compression in the first place. If you’re building something like a smart doorbell, a farm-based crop monitoring camera, or a tiny medical device that sends images back to a base station, your bandwidth is limited. Your storage is limited, too—if you’re fitting a camera into a 2cm x 2cm PCB footprint, you don’t have space for a terabyte of on-board memory. Compression shrinks those big raw image files down to something manageable without killing the quality you actually need. Raw uncompressed images are huge—like, a 1080p raw frame is around 6MB. Multiply that by 30 frames a second, and you’re looking at 180MB per second. That’s a waste of bandwidth and power, which is a huge deal for battery-powered devices.
Now, back to our cameras. Let’s talk about the different types of compression we support, because that’s where people get confused. There’s lossless compression and lossy compression, right? Lossless is when you shrink the file size without throwing away any data—so you can perfectly reconstruct the original image. That’s great for things like medical imaging or high-precision inspection where every pixel matters. Our higher-end industrial board cameras, like the Model X2 and the recently launched X3 Mini, support JPEG 2000 lossless compression, which crunches that 6MB raw frame down to around 2MB without a single pixel altered. Engineers we work with love this for PCB quality checks, where a tiny defect in a solder joint has to be 100% visible.
Then there’s lossy compression, which is where you throw away some data to get even smaller file sizes. It works by removing details the human eye can’t really pick up, like subtle color shifts or tiny noise patterns. For consumer IoT stuff, this is perfect. Our entry-level line, like the BLC-100 and BLC-200, support standard JPEG and even H.264 for video compression, which shrinks that same 1080p frame to under 200KB. That’s a 97% reduction! For a smart doorbell sending motion alerts, who cares if a single pixel of grass is a tiny bit off? As long as you can make out a person’s face or a package on your porch, it works.
But here’s the thing I always tell people: not all compression is equal on board level cameras. Unlike big, standalone webcams or DSLRs, our cameras have tiny processors built right in—we can’t stick a full-on computer chip inside a 10mm square PCB. So we don’t overload the camera with heavy compression algorithms that would drain the battery or cause lag. Every model we make is optimized for its use case. The industrial ones have more powerful on-board controllers to handle lossless compression, while the entry-level ones use lightweight, low-power compression that doesn’t eat into battery life.
Wait, let’s talk about real-world examples because that’s what matters, right? Last quarter, we worked with a startup building a portable, battery-powered wildlife camera for tracking songbirds. They were using our BLC-200 board camera, and before they realized we had compression support, they were struggling—their prototype would only last 3 days on a single charge because it was dumping uncompressed files to a tiny SD card. Once they switched on the built-in H.264 compression, they got 12 days of battery life, no noticeable drop in the bird images they were capturing. They told us it was a game-changer for their crowdfunding campaign.
Another example: a manufacturing client that uses our Model X2 to inspect tiny electronic components for defects. They needed every single pixel to be accurate, so they used the lossless JPEG 2000 compression. Before that, their inspection system was taking 2 seconds per component image to process because it was handling raw files. With compression, processing time dropped to 0.5 seconds, which let them increase their production line speed by 25%—that’s thousands of extra parts a month.
But I should also be honest about the limits, because no compression is perfect. If you’re trying to magnify a compressed image way beyond its original size, you’ll start to see artifacts. That’s just how compression works, and it’s not a flaw in our cameras—it’s a tradeoff. We always tell customers to match the compression type to their use case: lossless for precision work, lossy for general monitoring. We also let you adjust the compression ratio manually on every model, by the way—most of our cameras have a simple setting you can tweak via the UART or I2C interface, no fancy software needed. Just slide the scale from “max quality” to “max compression” based on what you need.
A lot of people ask if external compression is better, like using a separate chip to compress the images after they leave the camera. Sure, in some high-end industrial setups, that makes sense, but for 90% of our customers, on-board compression is the way to go. It saves space, reduces parts, and cuts down on latency—you don’t have to wait for a separate chip to process the images before sending them. Plus, it’s cheaper, which is a big deal for startups and small businesses working on tight budgets.
Let me also clear up a common myth: some folks think that board level cameras with compression have worse image quality than ones without. That’s only true if you use a garbage compression algorithm, or if you crank the ratio way too high for your application. Our engineers test every compression profile on our cameras to make sure that at the recommended settings, the quality is indistinguishable from raw for most use cases. For example, our JPEG settings are calibrated to match standard webcam quality, so even if you upload a compressed image to your phone, you won’t notice a difference from a raw one.
What about video? Because a lot of our customers use these cameras for live streaming, not just still images. Almost all our board level cameras support H.264 and H.265 video compression, which is the standard for live feeds. H.265 is even better, it compresses video 25% more than H.264 without losing quality. For a 720p live stream, that’s like cutting the data usage in half, which is huge if you’re relying on cellular data for remote locations. We had a client building a weather station in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, and they were paying a fortune for cellular data until they switched to H.265 on our BLC-250 camera. Their data bill dropped by 60%—no more laggy feeds, no more dead spots.
Okay, so let’s wrap this up in terms of what this means for you. If you’re designing a project that needs a board level camera, don’t sleep on compression. It’s not an extra feature—it’s a core part of almost every model we make, tailored to fit your needs. Whether you need lossless for precision inspection, lossy for low-power monitoring, or video compression for live streams, we’ve got you covered.
If you’re curious to see exactly how it works, or if you have a specific use case in mind, hit us up. We love talking through projects—no question is too small, and we don’t push stuff you don’t need. We can send over sample images with different compression settings, walk you through how to adjust the settings on your camera, or even help you pick the right model for your specific needs. Don’t waste space, power, or money on a camera that doesn’t do what you need it to. Reach out to our team to start a conversation about your project, and we’ll make sure you get the right board level camera for the job.
Lens References:
- ITU-T Rec. H.264 (2021). Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services.
- ISO/IEC 15444-1:2019. Information technology — JPEG 2000 image coding system — Part 1: Core coding system.
- Embedded Vision Alliance. (2022). “Optimizing Image Compression for Space-Constrained Embedded Systems”.
Shenzhen D-vitec Industrial Co., Ltd.
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