Question regarding Pandaboard connectivity for Meego TV application
Nishanth Menon
> On 17 December 2010 21:05, Nishanth Menon <n...@ti.com> wrote:
>> just curious as being a pandaboard community member - what specific
>> connectivity options are you expecting?
>>
>> Ethernet, EHCI, USB (peripheral and host otg) HDMI and DVI, Wlan are readily
>> available on pandaboard along with an beagleboard compatible expansion board
>> connector, camera and additional display connector..
> Compared to using CE4100 such as the telecom italia box :- spdif
> audio, component output, scart output, IR support and conditional
> access slot. It could be a better choice than an atom/crystalhd
> implementation especially if TI is ready to provide developers with
> them!
Panda community,
Q from the meego list: http://marc.info/?t=129258766900004&r=1&w=2
Could someone help suggest potential solution for Panda from h/w
perspective?
--
Regards,
Nishanth Menon
prpplague
interested in the meego TV development using the panda or asking if
there are some hardware solution to provide additional interfaces?
Dave
Nishanth Menon
I think my question was w.r.t Brendan's point:
conditional
access slot. It could be a better choice than an atom/crystalhd
implementation especially if TI is ready to provide developers with
them!"
Regards,
Nishanth Menon
prpplague
> Apologies on the late response, was on vacation.
> I think my question was w.r.t Brendan's point:
> "spdif audio, component output, scart output, IR support and
> conditional
> access slot. It could be a better choice than an atom/crystalhd
> implementation especially if TI is ready to provide developers with
> them!"
>
> do we know how Panda can support these as expansion?
>
> Regards,
> Nishanth Menon
via the expansion slot.
i'm not sure why anyone would want scart output, but it would be
doable too with some work.
as to the "conditional access slot", i'm not sure what this is
referencing. possible a "SIM" card of some sort. i'd need more details
to answer this one.
Dave
menon.n...@gmail.com
> Nishanth,
>
>> Apologies on the late response, was on vacation.
>> I think my question was w.r.t Brendan's point:
>> "spdif audio, component output, scart output, IR support and
>> conditional
>> access slot. It could be a better choice than an atom/crystalhd
>> implementation especially if TI is ready to provide developers with
>> them!"
>>
>> do we know how Panda can support these as expansion?
>>
>
> via the expansion slot.
>
> i'm not sure why anyone would want scart output, but it would be
> doable too with some work.
>
> as to the "conditional access slot", i'm not sure what this is
> referencing. possible a "SIM" card of some sort. i'd need more details
> to answer this one.
Looping in brendan as well.
Regards,
Nishanth Menon
Richard Watts
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:19 PM, prpplague <dave1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Nishanth,
>>
>>> Apologies on the late response, was on vacation.
>>> I think my question was w.r.t Brendan's point:
>>> "spdif audio, component output, scart output, IR support and
>>> conditional
>>> access slot. It could be a better choice than an atom/crystalhd
>>> implementation especially if TI is ready to provide developers with
>>> them!"
>>>
>>> do we know how Panda can support these as expansion?
>>>
>> SPDIF, component output, and IR are easily enough to add to the panda
>> via the expansion slot.
> So the usual expansion slot we already have on panda should be enough I guess?
So long as you have the LCD bus, yes. It'll be expensive, and Not A Real Set
Top(tm) , but you can do it - the components can all be bought off Digikey.
We did something similar for a demo with a Beagle C3 a year or two back.
Better would be for TI (or someone) to develop an STB reference design and
you can use that instead.
You probably want your IR done by an MSP430 or some other microcontroller;
saves spurious interrupts and if you're going this way, cost isn't an
issue. Or (*fx: blows own trumpet*) use <http://www.kynesim.co.uk/products.html>
or one of its many clones and avoid the problem completely.
You'll need SPDIF out of McASP rather than McBSP; don't know what's on
the expansion connector off-hand. Otherwise you're into a rather expensive
SPDIF out codec - Wolfson do some.
You can't have component unless you have the LCD bus exposed - only S/Video
(that said, component is a pain in most ways anyway).
Conditional access means many things to many people; in Europe, Dominique
probably wants CI (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Interface>) which is
basically PCMCIA. In the US you might (?!) want Cablecard, which is essentially
identical but works differently. You would probably want to slap a Xilinx down to
do the voltage translation and use that for your control micro and IR whilst you
were at it.
Though, frankly, no-one is going to licence your CA/DRM implementation anyway
so an access card implementation is supremely useless to hobbyists (though if
you feel like working for STB companies for free, they probably won't turn
you down).
Being firmly in the Android camp, I happen to think the MeeGo guys are basically
chasing up an increasingly blind alley (albeit a blind alley whose upstreams I
will gladly nick :-)), but if they want a decent, standard, reference set-top, an
OMAP4-based one seems perfectly practical to me - and it has the advantage that TI
are happy to support the community; the only question is whether someone will design
and manufacture one - and, of course, given Dominique's position, Intel should
really be providing free reference hardware and software themselves!
If the business case turns out to be breakeven-able, I can ask around and see
if a suitable reference box can be designed/otherwise made available?
Richard.
John (GMail)
What about this solution:
http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/OSD3.0
I believe this is based on the TMS320DM8168 video processor from TI.
Kind Regards
John
>
>
> Richard.
GeorgeIoak
Do you have any examples of how to get SPDIF through McASP or I2S for
that matter?
On Jan 4, 3:09 pm, Richard Watts <r...@kynesim.co.uk> wrote:
> menon.nisha...@gmail.com wrote:
Vladimir Pantelic
> Being firmly in the Android camp, I happen to think the MeeGo guys are basically
> chasing up an increasingly blind alley (albeit a blind alley whose upstreams I
> will gladly nick :-)), but if they want a decent, standard, reference set-top, an
> OMAP4-based one seems perfectly practical to me - and it has the advantage that TI
> are happy to support the community; the only question is whether someone will design
I don't see the OMAP4 as a STB chip at all, you need to add too many things to it
as this thread has proved.
Starting from something like the Netra aka DM8168 might be better, but then again
this one also lacks stuff like CA.
For a commercial STB product, lack of builtin (and thus "secure") CA is a big
showstopper.
Richard Watts
> Richard Watts wrote:
>> Being firmly in the Android camp, I happen to think the MeeGo guys are basically
>> chasing up an increasingly blind alley (albeit a blind alley whose upstreams I
>> will gladly nick :-)), but if they want a decent, standard, reference set-top, an
>> OMAP4-based one seems perfectly practical to me - and it has the advantage that TI
>> are happy to support the community; the only question is whether someone will design
>
> I don't see the OMAP4 as a STB chip at all, you need to add too many things to it
> as this thread has proved.
It really isn't. However, it is not too expensive, it is well-understood and has good
software support and if you're worried about actually getting a product to market in a
reasonable timeframe at a reasonable development cost, it is (IMO) much better to pick
a well-understood device which is easy to engineer with and build that up than it is to
throw a bunch of IP together on a SoC, cross fingers, and spend your time trying to
debug the hardware.
By extension, if you're planning to get a bunch of random hackers together to support
a platform, starting with something that barely runs Linux is handicapping yourself
before you start.
- or in other words, for MeeGo (or indeed Android) Connected TV I'd suggest focusing
on the functionality. Let the commercial STB companies spend 5 man-years fighting STAPI.
>
> Starting from something like the Netra aka DM8168 might be better, but then again
> this one also lacks stuff like CA.
You mean Integra, and yes; they are better suited to the job in hand but
far more expensive than OMAP + addons, they have much less mature software support,
and I don't know of a cheaply available dev board for them.
If you're really looking at an STB-targetted device, ST7105 seems to be the thing
to use; I hear ST are selling dev boards for it. But you'll spend most of your
time trying to persuade it to start up rather than doing useful engineering.
Trident are rumoured to have a dual-core Cortex-A9 STB device, but it seems to exist
so far only in press briefs.
>
> For a commercial STB product, lack of builtin (and thus "secure") CA is a big
> showstopper.
Correct. And anyone building a commercial STB project will have to write some.
I'm just pointing out that since no-one in the hacker community is going to get
certification for their CA, (a) it will be hard to test, and (b) it will be
useless except to people who intend to take your code and make their money off it.
If you're happy with that, a free CI/CableCard stack would be very welcome. I just
don't see the incentive for anyone to write one - perhaps one of the people who have
one will see an adoption advantage in making theirs open-source, though.
(and I will personally buy a pint for anyone who can come up with a standards-level
MHEG stack)
Richard.
Koen Kooi
>> Starting from something like the Netra aka DM8168 might be better, but then again
>> this one also lacks stuff like CA.
>
> You mean Integra
No he means netra, which is the family name. Integra (AM389x) is the spin without the interesting IVAHD and DSP bits. C6A816x has the DSP as extra and DM816x is the full package.
regards,
Koen