ArduTV Gives Your Arduino UNO or Compatible an FPGA-Powered HDMI-Compatible Video Output
Running over SPI using an AMD Spartan 7 FPGA, this shield delivers VGA-resolution digital video without overloading the host.
Zurich-based startup ArduTV is looking to make it easy to connect Arduino UNO-compatible microcontroller boards to modern large-format displays — by giving them an FPGA-powered HDMI-compatible digital video output.
"ArduTV is an easy-to-install interface designed for Arduino boards. It can display simple text and graphics on every television or monitor using just one HDMI cable," the company explains of its eponymous creation. "The interface uses one SPI and almost no other host board resources — all graphics routines are run on a dedicated FPGA."
That FPGA is an AMD Spartan 7, running a custom video engine developed specifically for the project. It's hosted on a shield-format board designed to slot straight into the top of an Arduino UNO or pin-compatible microcontroller development board — with software support in the Arduino IDE and STMicroelectronics' STM32CUBE IDE, the latter making it compatible with the company's Nucleo development boards. All pins are passthrough, meaning additional shields can be stacked on top.
"You can use ArduTV to output text or simple graphics from your projects on your television (or monitor)," the company says. "This makes ArduTV well-suited for electronics education, making classroom coding demonstrations on a projector or TV super simple. It’s also fantastic for many Arduino users who always wanted to get graphical output without buying yet another LCD — they can quickly convert their code to use any HDMI display, extending potential uses of existing projects."
The library and gateware will support a VGA (640×480) color video output at launch, ArduTV says, with higher resolutions planned for future firmware updates — and with the ability to update the FPGA's firmware directly from the host Arduino, no special programmer required.
The company is planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign for the ArduTV on Crowd Supply soon, with interested parties invited to sign up to be notified when it goes live; the library source code is available on GitHub under an unspecified license, with a sample project available on the ArduTV website.