Read a VGA signal, handle it and use with a led matrix.

Question

Hello everybody, I'm new to this community but I came here from the ben heck show that is what I think is my wish to became in a near future .

I am working on a project (for now it's only sketched on paper, there is nothing build yet) and I am looking for the best solutions to handle what I want to do. Basically the goal is to create a LEDWall to display some kind of video.

In my journey around the theme I find out that it's difficult to handle the fast signal coming form a VGA, first of all I thought about arduino to read the VGA signal, store only the part needed, and pass it to a 100x100 (or similar) LED matrix. The result was that arduino seems fast enough but it can't store a whole frame data in its memory so I am in trouble to process the signal.

The question is, is there something that can handle (read, store and process) the VGA signal and then drive a part of the led wall? I have many ideas in how to communicate between modules of the wall, but in some way I need to have also an IN/OUT ethernet connection to create a daisy-chain (this prevented me to use raspberry pi).

Few days ago I purchased from MicroChip a PIC16F887 that possibly can be used to my scope, I also purchased a 24FC1025 1024Mb memory that can be used with the pic to store a frame.

Can you guys help me with my ideas?

Gianmarco

shabaz · Answer

This is a non-trivial project, but feasible - probably not just with a small PIC or arduino though. There is a book that will help. It's called Digital Video Electronics by Andrei Cernasov. It's quite old (and just averagely useful, not the best, but is practical-oriented), but some of the information is quite relevant. You'll need a fair bit of electronics knowledge (which you may already have).

You could take a video and resize to 100x100 to see if you'd be satisfied with the results. Also, the cost/effort seems high for little benefit with such a low resolution.

EDIT: Also see this URL for valuable information.