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Olivier Gauthier
Jan 20, 2013, 7:04:44 AM1/20/13
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Hi freeseer team,
Here's an idea that struck me today. The basis of freeseer is to get
video archived to disk. Right now, from what I heard and researched,
hardware support for usb frame grabbers is difficult for multiple
reasons. Binary blob linux driver, expensive "not worth it" devices,
limitations on frame-per-seconds and resolution...
I've been dreaming about opensource hardware devices, from pcb design to
drivers to frontend software.
Chumby main developer is making this possible by producing real cool
hackable devices for a couple years now. The latest device of his
production is called "NeTV", which permits to superimpose an OSD to an
HDMI signal and feed it back to a TV. This device is made in a such a
way that people are invited to contribute use cases and software to make
great new things with it.
Somebody already expressed interest in taking the NeTV and using as a
hdmi frame grabber.
[http://www.kosagi.com/blog/forums/topic/capture-hdmi-frames/?checkemail=registered&instance=1]
The only thing is that the current hardware design is limited in the
available bandwidth you can get out from the FPGA chip, as the only way
of doing it right now is through I2C bus. Could be useful to do slow FPS
rate hdmi frame grabber, but for recording interactive demos in an
presentation, it's almost non-usable.
But then I stumbled on an project on OpenCores.org, they sponsor the
development of opensource FPGA system-on-chip devices. Yeah, if you
never heard of this before, you need to read about it.
Basically, some people managed to put a functional beta version of a
Amiga compatible system-on-chip that runs on a Altera development board.
[https://github.com/alfikpl/aoOCS#readme]
From there, there's a feature that got my attention :
> 10/100 Mbit Ethernet controller written in HDL to send the current VGA frames (frame grabber)
They managed to send the virtual VGA output of their Amiga emulator out
through the ethernet port of the altera board, all wrapped up in udp
packets. I think that gstreamer could easily read those...
From there, I checked the prices for a small kit and found that they
sell special a daugtherboard for adding a "double hdmi input" to the
FPGA... that's simply the thing we need! Two hdmi sources to film and
capture the conference.
[http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=68&No=583]
Funny thing is that even with those those nice piece of hardware, it
still comes under the price of the old solution for capturing full-hd
signal, and then we would get TWO channels for the price of a single one.
what do you think?
would it be beneficial to freeseer to have access to an adapted,
flexible, opensource and cheap hardware to capture video?
would two full-hd uncompressed signals fit in 100mbit ethernet/udp protocol?
I'll try yo get chumby's guy input on this subject here.
many many thanks,
Olivier
Here's an idea that struck me today. The basis of freeseer is to get
video archived to disk. Right now, from what I heard and researched,
hardware support for usb frame grabbers is difficult for multiple
reasons. Binary blob linux driver, expensive "not worth it" devices,
limitations on frame-per-seconds and resolution...
I've been dreaming about opensource hardware devices, from pcb design to
drivers to frontend software.
Chumby main developer is making this possible by producing real cool
hackable devices for a couple years now. The latest device of his
production is called "NeTV", which permits to superimpose an OSD to an
HDMI signal and feed it back to a TV. This device is made in a such a
way that people are invited to contribute use cases and software to make
great new things with it.
Somebody already expressed interest in taking the NeTV and using as a
hdmi frame grabber.
[http://www.kosagi.com/blog/forums/topic/capture-hdmi-frames/?checkemail=registered&instance=1]
The only thing is that the current hardware design is limited in the
available bandwidth you can get out from the FPGA chip, as the only way
of doing it right now is through I2C bus. Could be useful to do slow FPS
rate hdmi frame grabber, but for recording interactive demos in an
presentation, it's almost non-usable.
But then I stumbled on an project on OpenCores.org, they sponsor the
development of opensource FPGA system-on-chip devices. Yeah, if you
never heard of this before, you need to read about it.
Basically, some people managed to put a functional beta version of a
Amiga compatible system-on-chip that runs on a Altera development board.
[https://github.com/alfikpl/aoOCS#readme]
From there, there's a feature that got my attention :
> 10/100 Mbit Ethernet controller written in HDL to send the current VGA frames (frame grabber)
They managed to send the virtual VGA output of their Amiga emulator out
through the ethernet port of the altera board, all wrapped up in udp
packets. I think that gstreamer could easily read those...
From there, I checked the prices for a small kit and found that they
sell special a daugtherboard for adding a "double hdmi input" to the
FPGA... that's simply the thing we need! Two hdmi sources to film and
capture the conference.
[http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=68&No=583]
Funny thing is that even with those those nice piece of hardware, it
still comes under the price of the old solution for capturing full-hd
signal, and then we would get TWO channels for the price of a single one.
what do you think?
would it be beneficial to freeseer to have access to an adapted,
flexible, opensource and cheap hardware to capture video?
would two full-hd uncompressed signals fit in 100mbit ethernet/udp protocol?
I'll try yo get chumby's guy input on this subject here.
many many thanks,
Olivier
Dennis Ideler
Jan 23, 2013, 4:20:18 PM1/23/13
to free...@googlegroups.com
what do you think?
Your email was difficult for me to follow. Here's what I got from it. You want Freeseer to use open source hardware in its recording setup. Some potential options you found for this are: (1) NeTV, (2) Amiga emulator + Altera development board.
For future emails, please use less abbreviations (or write them in full the first time with the abbreviation behind it in brackets) and also write your thoughts in a more concise manner. That should make the emails a bit easier for us to understand :).
For future emails, please use less abbreviations (or write them in full the first time with the abbreviation behind it in brackets) and also write your thoughts in a more concise manner. That should make the emails a bit easier for us to understand :).
would it be beneficial to freeseer to have access to an adapted,
flexible, opensource and cheap hardware to capture video?
If by "hardware to capture video" you mean flexible, open source, and cheap, then of course it would be beneficial to use. But if by "hardware to capture video" you mean difficult to obtain, set up, and use, then no. I'm not familiar enough with the hardware you propose to know what categories it fits into, you'll have to convince us.
would two full-hd uncompressed signals fit in 100mbit ethernet/udp protocol?
I don't know. You might have better luck asking such questions on a site like http://avp.stackexchange.com.
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Olivier Gauthier
Jan 24, 2013, 8:07:04 PM1/24/13
to free...@googlegroups.com
On 23/01/13 04:20 PM, Dennis Ideler wrote:
> what do you think?
>
>
> Your email was difficult for me to follow. Here's what I got from it.
> You want Freeseer to use open source hardware in its recording setup.
> Some potential options you found for this are: (1) NeTV, (2) Amiga
> emulator + Altera development board.
>
> For future emails, please use less abbreviations (or write them in full
> the first time with the abbreviation behind it in brackets) and also
> write your thoughts in a more concise manner. That should make the
> emails a bit easier for us to understand :).
Thanks for helping that English writing of mine!
> what do you think?
>
>
> Your email was difficult for me to follow. Here's what I got from it.
> You want Freeseer to use open source hardware in its recording setup.
> Some potential options you found for this are: (1) NeTV, (2) Amiga
> emulator + Altera development board.
>
> For future emails, please use less abbreviations (or write them in full
> the first time with the abbreviation behind it in brackets) and also
> write your thoughts in a more concise manner. That should make the
> emails a bit easier for us to understand :).
>
> would it be beneficial to freeseer to have access to an adapted,
> flexible, opensource and cheap hardware to capture video?
>
>
> If by "hardware to capture video" you mean flexible, open source, and
> cheap, then of course it would be beneficial to use. But if by "hardware
> to capture video" you mean difficult to obtain, set up, and use, then
> no. I'm not familiar enough with the hardware you propose to know what
> categories it fits into, you'll have to convince us.
research. Unifed communication should "re-unified" right now. This kind
of DEEP integration between open source hardware software....
>
> would two full-hd uncompressed signals fit in 100mbit ethernet/udp
> protocol?
>
>
> I don't know. You might have better luck asking such questions on a site
> <mailto:freeseer%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
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