pico-rgb2hdmi

Raspberry Pico as an RGB Scanner to HDMI Converter

About the device

The device presents a simplistic approach of using a single generic purpose microcontroller to capture in real time RGB (CSYNC / HVSYNC) signals and to display it in an HDMI output without requiring FPGA chipsets of Single Boards computers with an HDMI diplay. This system relies on the use of the PIO capabilities of the RP2040, to do dedicated processing of IO signals enabled with IRQ and DMA capabilites of the processor.

Methodology

One processor is mostly dedicating to generate HDMI TMDS signals and the other to capture trigger captures and render on screen information among other functionalities. PIO + DMA are used to dedicate the capture without requiring CPU intervention and to send the TMDS frames to the HDMI diplay.

License - updated

The project full under the terms of the MIT license

Collaboration

You are encouraged to build, develop and share, if you want to collaborate share PRs and github issues.

Disclaimers

This solution (HW / FW /SW) is provided as is without any express or implied warranties.

While every effort has been taken to ensure the solution will work as is, the authors & contributors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the solution of the information contained herein. There is no guarantee as to the suitability of said source code, executable scripts, circuits and other information, for any purpose whatsoever other than as a self-training aid. I.E. If it blows your equipments, trashes your hard disc, wipes your backup, burns your building down or just plain don't work, IT ISN'T MY FAULT I will not be held responsible for any damages or costs which might occur as a result of the usage of the beforementioned solution, USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK

Donations

You can allways collaborate to buy me coffees to focus on new cool features, this is my paypal. paypalme mlorenzati

PCB

You can build yourself the PCB out of the gerber in HW section, if you wan you can buy it in pbcway pico-rgb2hdmi

Setup

• Download the pico-sdk, pico-extras, and pico-playground repositories
• Define PICO_SDK_PATH in your ~/.bashrc•
• Download the pico-sdk repository

Security

Install sha3sum to hash the binary

Mac

brew install md5sha1sum

Local sha3sum usage for sha256

sha1sum <file>
echo -n "<device_salt><device_uid>" | sha1sum -b

Tools

Tools were developed for sake of simplicity, focus is on firmware. It is required to install python3, pip and the following packages

pip install pyserial numpy pillow pyinstaller

converting CSV captures from serial port to images

python3 csv2png.py image.csv

This generates as output image.png

Using packtiles to generate include headers from images

./packtiles -s -f r1 char_c64_lineal.png font_c64.h

Using packtiles to generate sprites

./packtiles -sdf rgab5515 -m images/commodore.png cbm.h

Running the python gui app

python .\rgb2hdmiGui.py

Packaging the python app as a native app

pyinstaller -w -F rgb2hdmiGui.py

Build

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

Go to the specific folder and

make -j4

Visual Studio Code integration

Install the extensions as explained in the Pico Getting started manual

Or just download VScode and add the following extension

code --install-extension marus25.cortex-debug
code --install-extension ms-vscode.cmake-tools
code --install-extension ms-vscode.cpptools

Debug

Install open ocd as explained in the Pico Getting started manual section Installing OpenOCD

Using Pico probe

On the same document check Appendix A: Using Picoprobe

Open deploy and run

openocd -f interface/picoprobe.cfg -f target/rp2040.cfg -c "program <specific elf file> verify reset exit"

Read RP2040 to uf2

picotool save -a pico_rgb2hdmi_xyz.uf2

Videos