[chbot] FPGA vectorscope

[Mark Atherton]

Hi All,

Not sure if this is OT or not.

I have been tinkering with some real-time video processing using a 
DE0-nano FPGA board and a couple of home-made PCBs.

Video codec PCB has 2 x 12 bit ADC and 2 x 14 bit DAC, both running 
at 25Msps. Card also has anti-alias and reconstruction filters.

User interface card has Ethernet, SD card, 2 x USB, bluetooth etc, 
but only one of the USB comms ports is used in this video, and 
connects to a soft-core processor (NIOS II) which manages UI and the 
digital PLL.

Project started out as an experiment to see how difficult it was to 
lock a locally generated carrier to colour burst from a PAL video 
test signal, and as usual everything has got a bit carried away.

Video input is colour bars from a Sony broadcast camera.

Output has a real time monochrome display using a pair of 256 x 256 
pixel buffers swapping every frame (ping - pong). Output format video 
is 312 line progressive at about 50Hz driving a 7" LCD.

All memory is on board the FPGA. Current build uses 31% of available 
logic elements and 47% of available RAM.

And a short video is here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0WLwx-md0

I continue to be amazed what can be done with these NZ$110 FPGA 
development boards.

-mark