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Issue #195 October 2006
Generate Video from Software
by Rene Geraets
Microchip Technology and Circuit Cellar have teamed up to bring you the Microchip 16-Bit Embedded Control Design Contest. Jeff introduces Microchip’s 16-bit microcontroller and digital signal controller (DSC) families. Are you up for the challenge?
Start | Video Signal Anatomy | Transforming Digital I/O | Output Resolution | Memory Restrictions | Using DMA | Perfect Fit | Sources & PDF |
The ever-increasing clock speeds and computational power of modern microcontrollers enable faster, more complex processing. The increased performance of such devices allows you to work on applications that were previously out of your reach. For example, the high throughput of modern microcontrollers enables them to process and generate video signals.
I recently designed a CD player with video output to a TV (see Photo 1). The system is fairly simple. A Renesas Technology M16C/62P microcontroller is connected to an ATAPI CD-ROM player so it can play audio CDs. At the same time, the microcontroller produces a PAL or NTSC analog RGB color video signal. A television displays the video signal and provides a GUI to operate the CD player (see Figure 1).
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| Figure 1—The M16C62P starter kit board talks via an IDE bus to an ATAPI CD-ROM player to play audio CDs. The CD player’s audio output is routed directly to a television, along with a video signal that’s generated by the microcontroller. |
The M16C/62P microcontroller generates the video signal without any additional dedicated video hardware. All that’s needed are a few simple resistors and transistors to transform the microcontroller’s 5-V digital outputs into the voltage range for video. In this article, I’ll describe the system.
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