I'm new to embedded software, I want to build a Image processing application for my AT91SAM9261-EK development board by Atmel. To make it simple i want to use the OpenCV functions, but i'm not sure how am I going to generate a .bim file for flashing on the brd. Also can anyone you help me understand the flow / software structure for these kind of applications? Like, will I need Linux or any other OS, if so where does the actual image processing code which i intend to write using opencv sit ? Till now for simple codes like Basic LCD project, for this board i'm compiling the code using IAR workbench, so if I want to use the same for opencv functions, is there a way ? Is there any other open source image processing libraries similar to opencv & easy to integrate with IAR or any other ARM compiler ?
Also it would be really useful if there are any links to some learning documents regarding this Thanks in advance ?
Depending on your application, I think that CPU is not going to be powerful enough to do any kind of image processing; plus the weirdness of working with a foreign system is not going to make your life any easier.
If using this exact CPU is not super important I'd recommend a Beagleboard or Pandaboard, mainly because Ubuntu has installers targeted to the boards and Ubuntu/Debian offers OpenCV packages out of the box, and this is going to remove a whole lot of hurdles if you're new to embedded development -- basically it turns your dev board into a full-featured computer, just plug in a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
The Raspberry Pi looks to be promising in this regard as well, and you certainly can't argue with the price! (You may be able to install Debian on your board and get access to OpenCV packages this way, but I can't vouch for the ease-of-use of this method compared to Ubuntu, which is difficult enough, especially if you're new to Linux).