Camera Interface Specs

[jamesh]

That's only really possible with HDMI in.

But HDMI-in itself is not possible. That's why there are never HDMI inputs on video recorders.

Of course it's possible (I've seen it done). I think its Toshiba who do a HDMI to CSI convertor chip which would be easier to do than the scheme I have seen.

The difficulty arises when the incoming datastream is encrypted, when you would need HDCP keys in the convertor chip. I think Toshiba make two variants of the chip, one with encryption ability, one without. I'm presuming HDMI to the Raspi would not support encrypted datastreams.

[rkinch]

That's only really possible with HDMI in.

But HDMI-in itself is not possible. That's why there are never HDMI inputs on video recorders.

Of course it's possible (I've seen it done). I think its Toshiba who do a HDMI to CSI convertor chip which would be easier to do than the scheme I have seen.

I suppose you mean the case of unencrypted clean HDMI, which would be useful to have but still limited to certain HDMI sources. Implementing general HDMI input would have jackboots at the door by midnight.

[jamesh]

But HDMI-in itself is not possible. That's why there are never HDMI inputs on video recorders.

Of course it's possible (I've seen it done). I think its Toshiba who do a HDMI to CSI convertor chip which would be easier to do than the scheme I have seen.

I suppose you mean the case of unencrypted clean HDMI, which would be useful to have but still limited to certain HDMI sources. Implementing general HDMI input would have jackboots at the door by midnight.

General HDMI input is fine - it's providing a HDCP key without paying up that would result in jackboots.

There are quite a few unencrypted stream sources - camcorders, phones, other Raspi's.

[Hardware_man]

I found this

http://www.toshiba.com/taec/Ca.....id=1779480

in a related thread

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... f=7&t=2880

Hardware_man

[Hardware_man]

Has anybody looked at this I.C.? Does anyone have an opinion as to the usefulness of this I.C. as the basis of a universal video input board for the Pi?

Hardware_man

www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-risso/71/599/a09

[cyrano]

The link provides me with an error 404...

[davidoccam]

http://www.toshiba.com/taec/Catalog/Fam ... id=1779480

[Harbinger]

While all the talk of HDMI inputs is nice, I don't see many "professional" cameras (like videoconferencing cameras; think Sony EVI-D30/D100) with HDMI outputs. They typically have composite or S-Video outs. They're also available relatively inexpensively on Ebay. Ideally I'd like to convert some of these to IP cameras with remote-control of the pan/tilt/zoom using VISCA commands.

Is a Pi capable of this? I've seen cheap video/S-Video to USB adapters, but I imagine I'd have to have a USB-Serial adapter for the VISCA control.

[jbeale]

You can get cameras with HDMI output starting around $30 (and going up to as much as you'd like
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HD-1080P-Car-DV ... 25845e546f

[jamesh]

While all the talk of HDMI inputs is nice, I don't see many "professional" cameras (like videoconferencing cameras; think Sony EVI-D30/D100) with HDMI outputs. They typically have composite or S-Video outs. They're also available relatively inexpensively on Ebay. Ideally I'd like to convert some of these to IP cameras with remote-control of the pan/tilt/zoom using VISCA commands.

Is a Pi capable of this? I've seen cheap video/S-Video to USB adapters, but I imagine I'd have to have a USB-Serial adapter for the VISCA control.

I'd hardly call a device with only S-Video or composite professional! Neither is digital, and both have much lower video quality that HDMI.

Out of interest, what do people think the demand would be for a HDMI in device, bearing in mind that to be cost effective, it would NOT support HDCP (the HDMI encryption standard) so would not be able to take input from devices such as DVD players that play encrypted content. The demand here has dropped off dramatically, so it make me think there isn't really a market for it.

[Burngate]

The demand here has dropped off dramatically, so it make me think there isn't really a market for it.

Or maybe everyone's got fed up with asking?
As to the market, you only find out when you start selling it.
After all, there wasn't a market for the Pi until it was on sale. Well, a bit before it was on sale. In fact a bit before the design was finished. So perhaps the Pi's a special case.

[jamesh]

The demand here has dropped off dramatically, so it make me think there isn't really a market for it.

Or maybe everyone's got fed up with asking?
As to the market, you only find out when you start selling it.
After all, there wasn't a market for the Pi until it was on sale. Well, a bit before it was on sale. In fact a bit before the design was finished. So perhaps the Pi's a special case.

Well, if there was real demand, I'd expect more new people to be asking for it, rather than the 10 or so on here. It's a difficult one - I estimate it would be more expensive to make than the camera module, so I do wonder if there is enough demand to sell, let's say, 10k of them, and make the dev costs back.

[jbeale]

[...] It's a difficult one - I estimate it would be more expensive to make than the camera module, so I do wonder if there is enough demand to sell, let's say, 10k of them, and make the dev costs back.

It's certainly more complex than anything I've done. The difficulty may depend on the target price point... a few years ago, one very talented guy, made his own HDMI input -> HDMI output board using a FGPA. I think his board does basically what you would need for a HDMI recorder front-end for the R-Pi CSI interface. And a little bit more besides.

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2117
http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/28 ... _final.pdf

Note: this board is now a commercial product, which can overlay user data on a live HDMI video stream. The FPGA is also reprogrammable to do other things. It is called NeTV for $119.- from Adafruit. http://www.adafruit.com/products/609

NeTV enables overlaying your web content on existing HDMI video feeds, such as those from a BluRay player or cable box. Inside, it's an Angstrom linux box running Webkit that features chroma-key video compositing. Out of the box, the reference firmware enables the overlay of Facebook and Twitter feeds, and SMSes from Android phones. The UI is written in Javascript/HTML, making it easy and fast to develop your custom application.

The system also features a convenient HTTP API which uses POST commands to issue events to the screen and control device behavior. This, combined with zeroconf discoverability via Bonjour, makes integrating NeTV with other networked devices (such as your smartphone or laptop) a snap.

FPGA geeks take note! NeTV does video compositing with an FPGA. The FPGA is managed using a convenient set of built-in command-line tools. You can modify the NeTV's video processing capability using Xilinx's free Webkit development environment. Or, you can repurpose the FPGA for entirely new functionality; the sky's the limit!

[jamesh]

Interesting - I see no reason why a Raspi equivalent HDMI in, overlay (of whatever the Raspi can output) HDMI out could be made for less than $70 ($35 for the Raspi, $35 [guess] for the HDMI in).

Maybe there is more of a market there in areas out of the common knowledge and we just don't know it.

Add to that the rather impressive 'camera capture video wrapped round a OGLES teapot' demo I saw this morning - basically a guy here at Brcm has set up the system to send the camera output to an EGL texture - and that might make rather a decent product concept. Hmmm...interesting.

(we'll release a new Raspistill next week that does the teapot things)

[Harbinger]

I'd hardly call a device with only S-Video or composite professional! Neither is digital, and both have much lower video quality that HDMI.

While you may not consider it professional, I'm sure anyone in the videoconferencing or security arenas would disagree. It has autofocus and pan/tilt/zoom, which makes it far more useful for those purposes than a hi-rez camera you can't remotely control.

[Burngate]

... professional ... videoconferencing or security ...

A camera might be used by someone in the security profession, but that doesn't mean he's a cameraman by profession.

But then, a broadcast television cameraman may well use a camera without even HDMI - it's output appears at the far end of a digital link be it cable or wireless
He may well have one or more reverse video feeds so he can line up his picture with that of other cameras. Also talk-back so the director can slag him off.
He wants full control of zoom and focus, he may wish to control aperture, gain, white balance ... And he'd be irritated by remote pan-tilt when it's sitting on his shoulder

So the Pi camera isn't a professional camera, but nor is a security camera

[jamesh]

I'd hardly call a device with only S-Video or composite professional! Neither is digital, and both have much lower video quality that HDMI.

While you may not consider it professional, I'm sure anyone in the videoconferencing or security arenas would disagree. It has autofocus and pan/tilt/zoom, which makes it far more useful for those purposes than a hi-rez camera you can't remotely control.

Well, I rate image quality above the ability to pan and tilt (you can always add those separately - it's not a 'camera' function). Auto focus is a different kettle of fish, and requires a more expensive lens, although the Raspi would support it if the sensor did.

[delta43]

I'm sorry I can't bring anything valuable to the discussion, other than my vote: I'd really appreciate having an HDMI in, and then being able to make a cool thing: every modern phone and tablet could be used as a cheap external video monitor. Hopefully, there would also be a way to bring latency down, because 2-4s is too much (which people report in camera streaming setups).

On another thread about plans for such a board:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 52#p458852

[jamesh]

Those of you who watched Gordon H do his presentation at the weekend Raspberry Jam will have seen a demonstration of a HDMI to CSI convertor running on the Raspi. In effect HDMI in.

At the moment, the plans of what to do with it are a bit up in the air - demand is difficult to judge and it may not be worth putting in to production. Note also that it does not work with encrypted streams ie HDMI output from Bluray drives, HDTV devices etc.

[mikec79]

Those of you who watched Gordon H do his presentation at the weekend Raspberry Jam will have seen a demonstration of a HDMI to CSI convertor running on the Raspi. In effect HDMI in.

Is this presentation online anywhere?

[gsh]

Not sure if anyone recorded it, but if they did I didn't notice!

Yes I've got an HDMI input board a couple of them actually, unfortunately I'm not sure they're particularly useful to the general users and therefore (especially without HDCP) we'll probably not make it as a product... Difficult to gauge the actual usefulness of this and whether I should work on this over a whole bunch of other things that I could do (no I'm not going to give a list, Eben would literally kill me!)

But then again who knows !

Gordon

[delta43]

I don't really see why HDCP is considered a big factor to its usefulness?

A lot of cameras and other devices have hdmi out and this isn't just web cam quality devices. This would give us ability to connect to such "real world" devices and use their signals as we see fit.

[jbeale]

I hadn't even considered HDCP devices (DVD/BluRay output). The neat thing to me about HDMI input is using the R-Pi to do processing like motion detection, and network streaming from the wide range of camcorders that have HDMI outputs. And also HDMI output from a laptop screen might be useful in some cases. Maybe you could even build a multi-channel live HDMI switcher, using one R-Pi per HDMI channel. As far as I know there is no commercial live-switcher with HDMI inputs. They do exist for SDI signals but those are professional tools with matching price tags.

[jdb]

The application areas of interest that we banded about while discussing this little doohickey were more-or-less entirely:
A recording device for the "Let's play" Youtube/streaming crowd. It would be a useful gadget because
- Consoles typically do not enable HDCP for game content display - only when playing back blu-ray/purchased media content.
- PCs typically don't in a majority of cases.

Likewise, recording tutorials in an instructional video would be possible - you could even record your Pi desktop on another Pi.

Aside from that, we ran out of ideas. No, you can't use it to rip the output of a blu-ray player. It is possible to burn a HDCP device key into the toshiba bridge chip - though we would never be able to obtain a licence for one.

I hadn't considered recording the output of other cameras...

[jamesh]

I think this would be a good time to see what other people might use HDMI in for....please post your thoughts below...

So far we have:

Recording output of games consoles/PC for gaming video to things like YouTube.
Recording output of video cameras.
Effects unit - e.g. can add overlays on top of the HDMI stream.