Tutorial: Video output from your Arduino

http://tronixstuff.com/2011/05/30/tutorial-video-output-from-your-arduino/

Arduino board can generate composite video signal when you add two resistors and suitable software.

18 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Arduino-TVout
    https://github.com/Avamander/arduino-tvout

    This is a library for generating composite video on an ATmega microcontroller. Hosted here to keep it available from Arduino IDE

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    32 Shades of Grey
    Portable NTSC test pattern generator
    https://hackaday.io/project/148298-32-shades-of-grey

    This project implements a low cost portable NTSC video pattern generator for testing monochrome video systems regarding gain and resolution.
    The circuit provides a video output with voltage and impedance according with the RS-170 standard.
    A CR2025 coin cell powers the circuit that it is automatically activated when the output plug is connected.

    The heart of the project is the ATTiny85 running with internal PLL thus providing 6 pins for generating the video signal, being 5 used for luminance and 1 for synchronism.

    The 5 bits of luminance drive a resistor network that altogether with the pin used for sync are calculated to provide the output voltages expected by RS-170 standard having an output impedance of 75 ohms.

    Using 5 bits it is possible to have 32 steps of amplitude from full black to full white

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    32 Shades of Grey
    Portable NTSC test pattern generator
    https://hackaday.io/project/148298-32-shades-of-grey

    This project implements a low cost portable NTSC video pattern generator for testing monochrome video systems regarding gain and resolution.
    The circuit provides a video output with voltage and impedance according with the RS-170 standard.
    A CR2025 coin cell powers the circuit that it is automatically activated when the output plug is connected.

    The heart of the project is the ATTiny85 running with internal PLL thus providing 6 pins for generating the video signal, being 5 used for luminance and 1 for synchronism.

    The 5 bits of luminance drive a resistor network that altogether with the pin used for sync are calculated to provide the output voltages expected by RS-170 standard having an output impedance of 75 ohms.

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    32 Shades Of Gray
    https://hackaday.com/2018/06/06/32-shades-of-gray/

    The ATtiny85 is an incredible piece of engineering. In just eight pins, you get a microcontroller with just enough oomph to do some really heavy lifting. You get an Open Source toolchain, and if you’re really good, you can build your own programmer. It does have its limits though; there isn’t a whole lot of Flash, and of course you’re always going to need a few extra pins.

    For his Hackaday Prize entry, [danjovic] is pushing whatever limits are left with the ‘tiny85. He’s using it as a test pattern generator, pushing out pixels to any old TV. The entire circuit is powered by a coin cell, and the entire thing fits in a Tic-Tac box.

    32 Shades of Grey
    Portable NTSC test pattern generator
    https://hackaday.io/project/148298-32-shades-of-grey

    This project implements a low cost portable NTSC video pattern generator for testing monochrome video systems regarding gain and resolution.
    The circuit provides a video output with voltage and impedance according with the RS-170 standard.
    A CR2025 coin cell powers the circuit that it is automatically activated when the output plug is connected.

    The heart of the project is the ATMegaxx8

    After failing with using the internal oscillator I have switched to Arduino Board as a prototyping platform.

    Moved to ATMega328 platform (Arduino UNO Board)

    First thing noticed is that the image is perfectly stable using the crystal.

    Reply
  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Welcome to the – AVGA – Homepage
    http://avga.prometheus4.com/index.php?p=0-0

    The AVGA project – open source AVR based color video game development platform for single chip game console.

    Video standard independent (VGA, PAL, NTSC …)

    Reply
  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    AVR PAL vertical colour bar generator
    http://www.serasidis.gr/circuits/colour_bar_gen/colour_bar_gen.htm

    I started this project 3 weeks ago, because I was wondering ” is that possible, some AVR MCU to create simple colour bars? ”

    software you must create the color-carrier (4.43 MHz)

    So, the 8.86 MHz is not enough, that`s why I used 17.7 MHz crystal (4 times the color carrier). The easy thing is to create the white and the black bar, the rest of this project, beleave me, it’s not easy.

    he timing (clock cycles) of any instruction is very important for the phase-shift of the color-carrier and color-burst signals.

    The circuit iis constituted by AT90s2313 running at 17.734475 MHz (overclocked) and a , 5-bit DA converter (R2R-ladder) with 10 resistors.

    I know, it’s not a good idea to overclock 77 % upper than the working frequency of the MCU, but for a few hours, nothing wrong will happen.

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    What would be the cheapest way to get video signal?
    https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/50074/what-would-be-the-cheapest-way-to-get-video-signal

    You can use an Arduino to output NTSC/PAL Video.

    See: http://code.google.com/p/arduino-tvout/

    I have used this and it does work, easy to set up too.

    https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/TVout

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    TV Video PAL Signal Generator with Arduino
    http://www.javiervalcarce.eu/html/arduino-tv-signal-generator-en.html

    Apart from Arduino and a cable with male RCA connector, you need a DAC (Digital To Analog Converter) of 2-bits. It’s very easy to construct simply with two resistors of 330 Ohm and 1 kOhm

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Broadcasting Analog TV on an ESP8266!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSiRkpgwVKY

    Using a digital pin, shifting out a signal at 80 MHz to broadcast analog tv to an analog tv on channel 3. Whooh! Github: http://github.com/cnlohr/channel3 I was playing around with the I2S bus on the ESP8266 and found that it could output the I2S port at 80 MHz and still maintain the DMA!

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Arduino Pong with sound
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yN-gk0nHsM

    An Arduino Uno with TVout library is used to create a Pong clone playable on TV. The Pong code is written by Peter Lamonica and it is downloadable here: http://pastebin.com/L2PZSdNb I just added simple audio commands to create game sound on TV audio input

    The two Pong paddles are driven by 10 kOhm potentiometers inserted in two metallic boxes.

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Play Pokemon on an STM32 MCU
    https://blog.hackster.io/play-pokeymon-on-an-stm32-microcontroller-482765fae3d7

    uses an STM32F446RE microcontroller to generate composite video signals

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Taking advantage of higher-order harmonics, Manzel Seet’s PAL Streamer can output valid video signals from slower microcontrollers.

    Outputting a Video Signal From a Microcontroller’s GPIO Pins — Through Square-Wave Harmonics
    https://www.hackster.io/news/outputting-a-video-signal-from-a-microcontroller-s-gpio-pins-through-square-wave-harmonics-a42c99e52137

    Taking advantage of higher-order harmonics, Manzel Seet’s PAL Streamer can output valid video signals from slower microcontrollers.

    Student engineer Manzel Seet has demonstrated how to create a video output from a microcontroller’s general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins with no external components — by using pulse-width modulation (PWM) to generate analog TV signals.

    “I wanted to make a simple & cheap analog TV transmitter from parts I had lying around,” Seet explains of the project’s origins. “I searched online and I came across @CNLohr avr_vhf project. He used an AVR ATtiny85 to generate PWM waveforms which were picked up by his TV.”

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Driving A PAL TV Over RF Thanks To PWM Harmonics
    https://hackaday.com/2020/08/26/driving-a-pal-tv-over-rf-thanks-to-pwm-harmonics/

    While most analog televisions come with composite video inputs on a yellow RCA jack, the feature is not universal. This problem was even more prevalent in the 1980s, and most home consoles got around the problem by instead feeding video to the television’s tuner with an RF modulator. [Manzel Seet] had just such a television which used the PAL standard. Wanting to display images from a microcontroller, he put together PAL-Streamer.

    The aim of the project was to display images on an analog television with minimal investment in hardware over and above what [Manzel] already had on hand. To this end, the project was built using a STM32F411 Nucleo development board. Capable of running at clock speeds up to 100 MHz, there’s plenty of grunt to handle demanding tasks like outputting video signals to a TV.

    https://hackaday.io/project/171977-pal-streamer

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Built around the VLSI VS23S040, this smart add-on offers four dedicated display outputs — complete with independent frame-buffer memory.

    Pier 42 4x Video Display Shield Gives Your Arduino or Feather Board Four Composite Video Outputs
    https://www.hackster.io/news/pier-42-4x-video-display-shield-gives-your-arduino-or-feather-board-four-composite-video-outputs-98a98c8434b2

    Built around the VLSI VS23S040, this smart add-on offers four dedicated display outputs — complete with independent frame-buffer memory.

    Electronic engineer Wolfgang Friedrich has launched a display add-on for Arduino Uno and Feather form-factor microcontroller boards which give them an impressive four composite video outputs — complete with integrated frame-buffers for each.

    “There is a NTSC version with a 3.579545MHz crystal or a PAL version with 4.43618MHz crystal available. Currently 2 resolutions are implemented: NTSC 320×200 with 256 colors PAL 300×240 with 256 colors.”

    In theory, the board supports up to 720×576 resolution per display, though at just four colors; this mode is not yet implemented, however, alongside the potential for VGA compatibility on the DB15-HD connector — though “there is no guarantee for this to work,” Friedrich warns, “and no software is available for this mode at the moment.”

    The board is designed as an Arduino Shield, compatible with the Arduino Uno, Due, Mega, and other microcontrollers which share the same form factor and pinout. Interestingly, the same board is also compatible with microcontrollers which follow the Adafruit Feather layout — using an unpopulated-by-default second set of pin headers to accept any Feather board in place of an Arduino.

    The 4x Video Display Shield is now available on the Pier 42 Tindie store at $35 for a single-output variant and $39 for the full four-output version; the Feather Wing headers can be supplied for an additional $3.

    Source files for the board are available on GitHub under an unspecified license, with further information on the board design available on the project’s Hackaday.io page

    https://hackaday.io/project/170499-vga-shield-wing

    Reply

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