Arduino Video Sampler

[gijs] sent in an Arduino video sampler he’s been working on. The sampler is able to capture, pause and play a short video forwards and backwards.

The video capture circuit is based on the Nootropic Design video experimenter. We’ve seen a few project use this video experimenter board, but never with such smooth video. The sampler samples frames at a resolution of 128×96 and stores everything in a 256Kbit SRAM. A back-of-the-envelope calculation tells us that the sampler can hold a little under a second of video, more than enough to do something cool.

[gijs] says there is a 1 bit version and a 1.5 bit version of his video sampler. While we’re busy wrapping our minds around what half a bit is, he’ll be upgrading the 1.5 bit version to 2 bits. He’s also ordered some PCBs and expects to have a kit out by October. Check out a demo after the break.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/26420870%5D

15 thoughts on “Arduino Video Sampler

  1. Could anyone explain this fractional bit concept? Is he just using 3 bits for every 2 pixels or what? That would be odd… you’d have to choose 8 2-pixel brightness combinations to support.

  2. about the 1.5 bits.. there are two ram chips, both store the 1 bit video data, but the two bits are not encoded, so when the video is outputted it just gives 3 colors gray-scale instead of 4.

    i made the buttons by spray painting white buttons black, then wait a little and scrape something on the button, wait a little more and spray-paint with transparent paint.

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