Arduino Video Isn’t Quite 4K

Video resolution is always on the rise. The days of 640×480 video have given way to 720, 1080, and even 4K resolutions. There’s no end in sight. However, you need a lot of horsepower to process that many pixels. What if you have a small robot powered by a microcontroller (perhaps an Arduino) and you want it to have vision? You can’t realistically process HD video, or even low-grade video with a small processor. CORTEX systems has an open source solution: a 7 pixel camera with an I2C interface.

The files for SNAIL Vision include a bill of materials and the PCB layout. There’s software for the Vishay sensors used and provisions for mounting a lens holder to the PCB using glue. The design is fairly simple. In addition to the array of sensors, there’s an I2C multiplexer which also acts as a level shifter and a handful of resistors and connectors.

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Bitbanging VGA Fits In Under 1 KB

Don’t throw those old VGA monitors away, turn them into works of art with [danjovic] and VGA Blinking Lights. This circuit uses a PIC16F688 to generate VGA video. Not just a random spray of monochrome dots either. VGA Blinking Lights puts up an ever-changing display of 48 colored squares.

blink-thumbOriginally created for the square inch contest, VGA Blinking Lights could hide behind a quarter. [Danjovic] dusted his project off and entered it in The 1 kB Challenge. The code is written in PIC assembly. The final hex used to generate the squares clocks in at 471 words. Since the PIC uses a 14 bit word, that’s just over 824 bytes. Plenty of space for feature creep!

Video is generated with a twist on the R2R DAC. [Danjovic] tweaked the resistor values a bit to obtain the correct voltage levels for the VGA standard. The color of the squares themselves are random, generated using a Galois Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR).

With only a handful of components, and a BOM cost under $5, this would be a fun evening project for any hardware hacker.

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If you have a cool project in mind, there is still plenty of time to enter the 1 kB Challenge! Deadline is January 5, so check it out and fire up your assemblers!

Script Your Way Out Of Video Editing Drudgery

[Victor Frost] has a deep voice and a fancy top of the line camera. While one would assume this to be a more than generous situation for life to put a person in; it’s got its own set of problems. Mainly that his fantastic fancy camera uses the most modern version of the popular h.264 encoding scheme, h.265. Gasp!

While that too seems like a pro, unfortunately h.265 doesn’t play as nice with his editing software. The solution seems easy, just transcode it and get on your way. However, when you start talking about transcoding 4K video from a top-of-the line source and retaining the quality. Well… It can bring a processor to its knees. Since he’d rather be playing overwatch than transcoding video on his main computer, he decided to offload and automate the drudgery to his spare.

That’s how the Ingest-a-Tron 9000 came into play. It uses a lot of open source software and, yes, windows batch files to take the files off his camera, process it on one computer, and dump it to another. Now he can game (or edit) while he waits. For those of us who are estranged from Linux thanks to our favorite software, it’s good to know that there are still ways to automate away the pain. Video after the break.

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Low-cost Video Streaming With A Webcam And Raspberry Pi

Some people will tell you that YouTube has become a vast wasteland of entertainment like the boob tube before it. Live streaming doesn’t help the situation much, and this entry level webcam live-stream server isn’t poised to advance the art.

We jest, but only a little. [Mike Haldas] runs a video surveillance company that sells all manner of web-enabled cameras and wondered what it would take to get a low-end camera set up for live streaming. The first step was converting the Zavio webcam stream from RTSP (real-time streaming protocol) to the standard that YouTube uses, RTMP (real-time messaging protocol). Luckily, FFmpeg handles that conversion, so he compiled it for his MacBook Pro and set up a proof of concept. It worked, but he needed a compact solution that would free up his laptop. Raspberry Pi to the rescue – after loading a bunch of libraries and a four-hour build and install of FFmpeg, the webcam was streaming 1080p video of [Mike]’s sales office. He was worried that the Pi wouldn’t have the power needed for the job, and that it would be unstable. But as of this writing, the stream below has been active for six days, and it’s riveting stuff.

Raspberry Pis are a staple in the audio streaming world, like this pro-grade FM broadcast streaming rack or this minuscule internet radio streamer. And of course there’s this quick and dirty, warm and fuzzy streaming baby monitor.

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3D Printed GoPro Toy Car Mount

There’s been a spate of YouTube videos of people strapping GoPro cameras onto things recently. [Ruiz] at [Adafruit] is looking to contribute to this trend with this tutorial on 3D printing a GoPro Session toy car mount. The entire toy car mount is 3D printed, except for the axles, which are made of the unprinted filament with melted ends to hold the wheels in place.

The part of the mount that fits around the camera is printed in a flexible filament (think Ninjaflex), so it holds on tightly to the GoPro and can be used as a bumper as well. The car that fits into the base of the camera sleeve is designed to run on Hot Wheels track so that you can lay out your shots and keep the subject in frame. It’s a neat design that could be useful for creating an interesting point of view in a video.

If you have hotwheel, a GoPro (or other tiny camera), and 3D printer this is the project that will get you through the holiday without the kids driving you crazy. Good luck dear hackers.

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Projection Mapping In Motion Amazes

Projection mapping is pretty magical; done well, it’s absolutely miraculous when the facade of a building starts popping out abstract geometric objects, or crumbles in front of our very eyes. “Dynamic projection mapping onto deforming non-rigid surface” takes it to the next level. (Watch the video below.)

A group in the Ishikawa Watanabe lab at the University of Tokyo has a technique where they cover the target with a number of dots in an ink that is only visible in the infra-red. A high-speed (1000 FPS!) camera and some very fast image processing then work out not only how the surface is deforming, but which surface it is. This enables them to swap out pieces of paper and get the projections onto them in real time.

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Send A Raspberry Pi Back In Time To 1980

One of our favorite hacker-scavengers on YouTube, [The Post-Apocalyptic Inventor], has been connecting his Raspberry Pi up to nearly every display that he’s got in his well-stocked junk pile. (Video embedded below.)

Modern monitors with an HDMI input connect right up to the Pi. Before HDMI came VGA, but the Pi doesn’t do that natively. One solution is to use a composite-to-VGA converter and pull the composite signal out of the audio jack. Lacking the right 4-pole audio cable, [TPAI] soldered some RCA plugs directly onto the Pi, and plugged that into the converter. On a yet-older monitor, he faced a SCART adapter. If you’re European, you’ll know these — it’s just composite video with a different connector. Good thing he had a composite video signal already on hand.

online-with-my-1980-tv-set-huc2ls56hwimkv-shot0004The pièce de resistance, though, was attaching the Pi to his 1980 Vega TV set. It only had an antenna-in connector, so he needed an RF modulator. With a (presumably) infinite supply of junk VCRs on hand, he pulled an upconverter out of the pile, and got the Pi working with the snazzy retro TV.

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