Definitely agree with this. I got Face Detection using OpenCV on a 320x300 video stream to work at about 2fps (e.g. two detection cycles per second) on the B+ over-clocked to 1Ghz so hopefully the Rpi2 will be a substantial improvement on this.
I was using it the context of controlling the "eye" of a wheeled robot so both the eye and the robot could follow faces. 2FPS was workable on this but 320x300 didn't give it much of a field of view.
Are you aware that there are already more powerful tiny ARM single-board computers on the market that fit in the same size, power and price envelope? Like ODROID: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/
From $35 4x1.5Ghz Cortex-A5 ODROID-C1 to $99 octa-core Exynos5422 ODROID-XU3 Lite (4x1.8Ghz Cortex-A15, 4x1.3GHz Coretex-A7, plus OpenCL 1.1)
They have their own ecosystem and monthly magazine (sic!). Raspberry Pi is one of the first and most popular; it's great for beginners, but if you really need to push the envelope there is always competition that tries to undercut them in price, performance and/or features. Now again, RPi 2 has set a new bar, but it is not that high.
Yep absolutely, have been wondering about the C1, my only concern is that getting OpenCV and some of the supporting libraries to build on the Pi was a big challenge but doable because there's such a large community to help out. The same was true with WiFi and Camera drivers.
So the C1 and related boards look great but I'm cautious of building around something with a smaller community just because of the potential for it taking far longer to troubleshoot the underlying stuff I need setup to work on the actual project. That said I'm pretty sure I'll succumb to a c1 in the next couple of months!
I was using it the context of controlling the "eye" of a wheeled robot so both the eye and the robot could follow faces. 2FPS was workable on this but 320x300 didn't give it much of a field of view.