I’ve been trying out the (frankly, brilliant) TVOut library by Miles Metzler which allows your Arduino to talk to a TV using either NTSC (North America) or PAL (Europe) composite video. The hardware setup takes only two resistors, three jumper wires and an RCA plug with cable and an Arduino of course. I tested with an Uno after breadboarding the circuit.
There are two sample programs:
- DemoNTSC (or DemoPAL)
- NTSCserialTerm
DemoNTSC produces lines, text, and a bouncing cube.
NTSCserialTerm allows text typed in a terminal program to be displayed on the TV.
The library code for the serial port demonstration seemed to have a couple of infelicities. Details on these are here, there are a couple lines in the pollserial.h and pollserial.cpp that need to get changed.
I had to open up the .h and .cpp files with an external editor, (not the Aruduino editor….because it wouldn’t open .cpp files.
I tested this first by simply opening a serial port session with the Mac terminal program.
That seemed to be a bit rough around the edges, so I downloaded Cool-Term, and configured it for the USB serial port at 57600. I also turned on the local echo so I could see what I was typing in the terminal window, and it now appears on the TV.
I’ve just ordered the nootropic video overlay shield for this. Assembled kits are out of stock, so I hope I don’t fry the build-it-yourself version. I’m also really intrigued by their EZ-Expander shield, which adds 13 additional digital output pins to an Arduino by a clever method of using shift registers.
Now of course, the Raspberry-Pi does TV right out of the box with on onboard connector.
We stand on the shoulders of giants. But that is what is so cool about the Arduino and open-source hardware movement.
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