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Help TV-Out on the Droid

Hmm..... what is your idea about a wireless solution? I had an idea a while back of using some sort of local wifi connection to display the screen, but then you would just be wiring the droid threw another computer.
It would be faster, easier, and better to just be running Android on the machine, like I am doing.
 
And how is this relevent? I don't think it could be too easily modified, and there still would be no way to connect it to the Droid.
 
Apeman said:
And how is this relevent? I don't think it could be too easily modified, and there still would be no way to connect it to the Droid.
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:rolleyes:

Look, I'm just trying to help you guys out, buy pointing you in different directions not previously thought of, which could possibly lead to some progress. In the mean time, I'll continue enjoying TV Out on my device.

Good luck in all your endeavors.
 
Dude! That GuiltyPixel Chick is a genius! And Apeman, at only 14? you be following in her footsteps..

Anyway.. came across an article dated 2002 about Cambridge Silicon Radio streaming video over bluetooth at 25fps.. not super, but may be adequate, plus that was back on 2002..CSR gives the world’s first demonstration of streaming video via a Bluetooth link

also of note are the mini usb powered screens, such as the mimo here: Mimo Mini 710 USB Monitor - extra screen space on the go which apparently has it's own little graphics card built in, making it not so great for intense graphics, but, again, may be adequate..

Those things at least have some of the functionality you're looking for.. Whether it's possible to steal their soul's and implant them into your own device/droid would take some more research.. If i can find more time, I'll try to look into it.

That beagle board looks pretty spiffy too.. again with the time thing..
 
this whole thread is pretty awesome. found it going about looking for a way to have video out from my g1. spent the last hour reading through the thread.

ape- have you looked into possibly the Zii egg or the Odroid as a solution for what youre trying to do as an android solution? i know its not a droid as everyone here has. but it could be a viable alternative to the phone. and with all the functionality (-cell radio)

keep up with the good work.. im impressed.
 
meekrab said:
That actually seems like a really good idea. I assume whatever video signal would, by necessity, have to route through the usb port. Devs, get on it (please).
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Hi. I'm new here and a hardware engineer by trade :-). I think what you would need on the Droid is the following (assuming the 3.5" jack has no analog video out) :

1> USB host mode (done already I believe).
2> Some code that will take a decoded frame of data and turn it into an ITU656-like YCrCb stream. This stream is subsequently sent out over USB. This is basically a means to send digital video. You can send anything from 480i to 1080p (although bandwidth would be an issue at HD rates :-) ). Again, the Droid would have to operate as a host to do this.
3> The tricky part. You would need some kind of USB dongle that houses a YCrCb to video decoder. These ICs are relatively cheap as are the USB 2.0 high speed endpoint ICs. All in all, the circuit would be realtively simple.

It's the software that's the issue ... especially on non-rooted phones as I do not believe you can have the USB controller enter host mode. Also, you would have to be able to DMA data from the decoded video frame to the USB interface at a rate that insures glitch free video.

If you wanted to send 480p video over USB in YCrCb stream (let's just say a 640x480 VGA-like frame), that's 640 bytes per scanline (the format decoders expects is Y(luminance), Cr (red component), Y luminance, Cb (blue compoent), etc. Each Y Cr and Cb value is a byte. The device that decodes this stream derives the red, green, and blue components of a pixel by interpolating the nearest Y Cr and Cb values.

So ... 640 pixel values x 480 scanlines = 307,200 bytes. At 60FPS, you are looking at almost 150Mbps. Ouch. 480i (standard def TV) would be half that at 60FPS as only odd or even scanlines are sent per frame. Still, you'd have to insure that the Droid can sustain those rates.

I think I might be off a bit as a Y and Cx component may constitue a single pixel though doubling the 640 pixels required to 1280 ... ouch. It's been a few months since I messed with that stuff.

So, all in all, it'd be a fairly tall order to get video out of the Droid in raw format. Your bet bet is to output compressed video and have some kind of dedicated IC to decode the video for display purposes. H264 encoded video compresses rather nicely with very good quality, so you may want to go that route.

These are just some random thoughts ... I could be wrong on some things and might be making the problem a bit more complex than need be. Two things I do know for a fact though are that you are going to need high speed, sustained data transfers from the Droid in a USB host mode AND some kind of external video decoder to drive a display IF the 3.5mm jack has no analog video support. Hope this helps ... don't let it discourage you. The only problem you'll have is that if you make this and it works, chances are some $3 knockoff will be produced in China :-). The USB endpoint IC I have in mind as well as the digital video decoder IC are about $20 for the pair ... that doesn't take into account a PCB, connectors, etc. As a homebrew project, it is not cheap :-)!
 
megadeth2600 said:
Hi. I'm new here and a hardware engineer by trade :-). I think what you would need on the Droid is the following (assuming the 3.5" jack has no analog video out) :

1> USB host mode (done already I believe).
2> Some code that will take a decoded frame of data and turn it into an ITU656-like YCrCb stream. This stream is subsequently sent out over USB. This is basically a means to send digital video. You can send anything from 480i to 1080p (although bandwidth would be an issue at HD rates :-) ). Again, the Droid would have to operate as a host to do this.
3> The tricky part. You would need some kind of USB dongle that houses a YCrCb to video decoder. These ICs are relatively cheap as are the USB 2.0 high speed endpoint ICs. All in all, the circuit would be realtively simple.

It's the software that's the issue ... especially on non-rooted phones as I do not believe you can have the USB controller enter host mode. Also, you would have to be able to DMA data from the decoded video frame to the USB interface at a rate that insures glitch free video.

If you wanted to send 480p video over USB in YCrCb stream (let's just say a 640x480 VGA-like frame), that's 640 bytes per scanline (the format decoders expects is Y(luminance), Cr (red component), Y luminance, Cb (blue compoent), etc. Each Y Cr and Cb value is a byte. The device that decodes this stream derives the red, green, and blue components of a pixel by interpolating the nearest Y Cr and Cb values.

So ... 640 pixel values x 480 scanlines = 307,200 bytes. At 60FPS, you are looking at almost 150Mbps. Ouch. 480i (standard def TV) would be half that at 60FPS as only odd or even scanlines are sent per frame. Still, you'd have to insure that the Droid can sustain those rates.

I think I might be off a bit as a Y and Cx component may constitue a single pixel though doubling the 640 pixels required to 1280 ... ouch. It's been a few months since I messed with that stuff.

So, all in all, it'd be a fairly tall order to get video out of the Droid in raw format. Your bet bet is to output compressed video and have some kind of dedicated IC to decode the video for display purposes. H264 encoded video compresses rather nicely with very good quality, so you may want to go that route.

These are just some random thoughts ... I could be wrong on some things and might be making the problem a bit more complex than need be. Two things I do know for a fact though are that you are going to need high speed, sustained data transfers from the Droid in a USB host mode AND some kind of external video decoder to drive a display IF the 3.5mm jack has no analog video support. Hope this helps ... don't let it discourage you. The only problem you'll have is that if you make this and it works, chances are some $3 knockoff will be produced in China :-). The USB endpoint IC I have in mind as well as the digital video decoder IC are about $20 for the pair ... that doesn't take into account a PCB, connectors, etc. As a homebrew project, it is not cheap :-)!
Click to expand...


are you trying to hurt people?

the new(est) megadeth rules. it's called endgame.
 
The PC program Droid Explorer has live video feed from the Droid when it is connected via USB. If that is possible then this must work somehow. The video is a little bit laggy though.
 
karmagedon said:
are you trying to hurt people?

the new(est) megadeth rules. it's called endgame.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have every Megadeth album :-). Nothing beats their first three though (takes me back to my youth). Peace Sells is one of my all time favorites of any genre of music :-)! I am in pain from playing Rust in Peace on Rock Band this past weekend. For those not familiar with Megadeth, imagine Metallica with talent ;-).

Back to the video. No, not I'm not trying to hurt anyone :-)! Just trying to explain the best I can in "English" the troubles of streaming video over USB :-). Trust me, I don't think I'm smart or anything ... these are just things I've run into over the years. I think the only way it can be reasonably done is via compression :-). Raw video data rates are too high.

Opening the phone and hacking up the HW is a feasible solution for some people, but I wouldn't recommend it for all. Soldering hacks on modern PCBs really isn't for most people these days :-)! I read some of the earlier posts and virtually all of the signals coming from the OMAP to the display and the like are digital (and, well, they are ... I've glanced over the data on the OMAP before). The analog S-Video output might not need any "real" addtional components, but you would need to make sure you have some really short cables. Also, if the analog video signals are "unterminated", simply forget about that as a solution :-)! Any TV would expect that the source driving the video has a 75 Ohm source termination. However, a neat experiment might involve enabling the analog output of the OMAP, soldering in a new jack capable of carrying both video and audio, and see what happens.

Now, that program that allows you to have the Droid stream video to your PC (Droid Explorer?) ... chances are it is laggy merely due to reduced frame rates. Keep in mind that the Droid can tell the PC that it is free to send a frame. Your PC will store this data and display it. In this case, the Droid can take more time than the 16.7ms a television requires you to transmit a frame of video. When you are driving a television, you have a whole different set of problems as you don't have that intermediate storage that your PC provides (nerds like myself call this a frame buffer). A television needs the data uninterrupted or you get all sorts of neat things displayed on your TV.

The WiFi idea discussed here is not a bad one. You could make a little WiFi receiver that accepts frames of raw data and displays them at a lower frame rate assuming the WiFi receiver has a frame buffer. However, this may not be acceptable to a lot of people as you'll most certainly lose frames.

I still think the only feasible solution is to output compressed video, like h264, to a decoder over USB. There has to be some kind of chip out there that does this (decodes h264 and drives analog video outputs). Encoding h264 is by no means trivial though and needs a lot of horsepower (assuming you want high quality) ... but chances are you aren't looking for high quality video to display when your watching recoded TV from your Droid while traveling :-)! Presentations would look as sharp as they do on a PC since they have little, if any, motion and would look very good.

If there is a private discussion about this or other Droid hardware ideas, please let me know as I have a few myself. One wouldn't be all that hard to get going (I think) IF they allow non-rooted phones to act as USB hosts eventually (only reason I stress non-rooted is that nobody is going to produce something that requires rooting the phone ... 99% of the people that own Droids don't even know what that is :-)! ).

Ed

PS Please do not think for a minute I am trying to discourage development of this for any reason!!!!! If I am not mistaken, the person trying to do this is 14 years old!!! Seriously, if I had this motivation at 14, I'd be laying on a beach drinking Rum Runners all day long as I would have retired years ago :-) ... please keep this discussion alive and let me know if I can help offline!!!!
 
Ok I have a Droid and I also have a HTC Touch Pro and I wanted to tryed this myself too. Touch Pro come stock with the TV-Out cab installed you just need to buy the cord for the RCA to plug into the phone from HTC and it works good for movies and SNES games and soo on and soo on. Anyway I wanted this same thing on my Droide but you are right it just will not work even the white Ipod cord that takes a 3.5 to RCA will not work I tryed every thing. Only way I could get clost is I ported the 2.1 OS from the Nexus ONE on to my Windows Mobile Touch Pro hooked up the tvout cord then ran Hart from my root SD card and still a no go but they should come out with an Android phone soon that can do this since it is a very nice app for WM.:o
 
My Motoroi has HDMI tv-out, they include the connector in the phone... You might have to wait a month or 2 though for it to be released in your region. ㅜㅜ

Apeman said:
Hi

I am about to purchase the Motorola Droid today, and one of my big questions is about TV-Out. Some of Samsung's phones (Omnia) have TV out via the 3.5mm jack, and I wanted to know if the Droid can do it as well. I modified a Myvu Crystal display and made it monocular, wanting to make a Wearable Computer.

If its not a hardware problem, is there a software issue? Does Android support TV-out out of the box? Please any assistance would be great!

Thanks
UPDATE: The website is here: EyePC Wearable Computing System! We have a forum and blog to keep you updated.

Apeman
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for replying, and sadly I have not had time to continue on trying to get video out threw the Droid.

Other alternatives (Such as a lot of WM HTC phones have TV out capabilities) have already or are in the process of having Android being ported to them, and will hopefully allow users to use their own devices with the EyePC.

Sorry guys, but it does not look like the Droid supports it :(
 
Quoting Dansdroid at another forum:

The Texas Instrument OMAP 3430 processor in the Droid supports TV-S video out (PAL/NTSC), and the display controller has parallel-serial output for QVGA and XGA, which I am assuming those last two are for the built-in video recorder. Now, as to whether the good people at Motorola has the TV-S video out from the processor to the micro USB connector, I don't know, and I can't find it in their technical specifications on the Droid. If they *did*; however, it's a matter of getting the correct cable with the correct terminations to connect to the micro USB connector.

not sure if it's of any use but the information seemed useful to add to this thread...
loving my milestone, missing the video out...


PS apparently (not sure though??) the USB port seems to be 10 pins? Some people were hinting at that but I am not sure.
I have asked Motorola live support about the TV Out functionality through a possible firmware update or anything like that, and they told me no such feature is planned for releases to come.
 
OMG APEMAN U ARE MY NEW HERO (no worries I'm not gay).

Once I found out you were 14 and were this wacko maniac computer science genius doing s tartup company, made me wanna resign on my dream to go to MIT grad school (I'm 19). No for real. But, we are all different and we all have talents, I applaud you for starting to do SERIOUS research at a young age. I usually preferred to spend my time finding out about how UFO's could fly, and would be reading about paranormal subjects when I was your age ( and got rejected from MIT for undergrad xD )

Well, since we are both looking fot MIT MEdia LAB :D (Although I'm looking for grad school and you for under grad), I think we should get in touch man. I am starting out as an Android Developer and am also starting a start up company based on Android Apps.

I am presenting a project like the Sixth Sense for a ComputerScience & Mechatronics Congress in South America, and came to this thread looking for any availabe information, about the Video outports, to connect an Android OS phone with my picoprojector and use Computer vision algoithms with a new tangible user interface I'm creating :D.

For those who want to replicate a Sixth Sense, I encourage you to get a picoprojector. I have a really cool one that can be connected to the iphone/itouch. Its the Cinemin Pico-projector from WowWee technologies.

@Apeman I'll keep you informed on my progress. PM about anything new.
 
i would love to have tv out and Apeman is a great new mind that we need in the USA, now i have fios and a new program called fios mobile remote it a program that you download to the phone, and activate it threw the STB I can controll the tv, Set top box, and what ever pics that I have on the phone I can stream them wirelessly to the tv seems like we can kinda do the same for streaming tv though it may only work on fios because it uses the action tech router to accomplish this task. What do you smart guys think about this angle
 
I have had that setup since they released that app :D

Proud FiOS customer since Feb. 2009.

Well anyways, that works because the FiOS STB's are connected threw the main Wireless N router that Verizon gives you, and the phone is just sending the command threw there. I think the future of television and pretty much any appliance control is threw WiFi, where all appliances in your house will be connected to a main router in your house, and you can control everything in your home (From lights, to stove, to TV and all the way to your microwave) from your computer or phone.

Copyright Thomas Sohmers 2010.
 
My point exactly I think wireless is the wave of the future as I used x10 adapters in the past and I now that all the info routes thru the router. I am a Verizon tech and have been installing Fios from day 1 about 5 years now so thanks again and that is why I ask can we input our own little tweeks to it and stream video if pics can show up then so should video just a matter of assigning the video with the same tag or location that the pics are stored in is that possible?
 
Apeman said:
Well anyways, that works because the FiOS STB's are connected threw the main Wireless N router that Verizon gives you, and the phone is just sending the command threw there.
Click to expand...

When I called Verizon about an N router, they said they didn't have them. Could you PM me with some info about your router so that I can call them back?
 
Apeman said:
Ok I understand about the 3.5, I already took the video and im not taking another one. I am going to investigate more into the micro USB..... you think something like this will work? Olympus CB-AVC5 CB-AVC5 AV cable - USB micro Male to 2 x RCA Male

I am going to start working with the Android SDK.... doing the tutorials now.
Click to expand...

I really didn't read this whole thread, so sorry if I'm restating something. But anything is possible with the right amount of knowledge and work. The DROID has been proven to successfully act as a USB host, and in theory can support any driver linux does because of the OS's linux roots. So with some time, I'm sure a driver could be written to support video out with this RCA adapter. Then once you get that far, creating an app to bring the top-level GUIs and the drivers together would be easy. That being said, you would most likely need to root the droid and create a custom ROM with the driver included.

USB Host Hack: Droid gets a USB hack allowing it to control printers and cameras, humans put on alert -- Engadget
 
Actually, I am currently working on that. Sorry for anyone who is interested and looking for news on this project and there hasn't been any updates. There are some very big things happening with this, and hopefully within the coming months/years we will all be assimilated into the Borg :D

Anyways, I am currently working with the TI OMAP 3530 (A similar board to the Droid's) and I am trying to find an easy way for it to support video out so people would be able to modify there droids (with some hardware hacking) to support video output. I have not tested much with the miniUSB (Don't have the cord, and I sold the second droid I had to buy some other supplies, so I need another unactivated Droid to experiment with.)

If you have been reading threw this thread, I was talking about the Beagleboard, and I am also working with that. Using a heavily modified version of 0xdroid (Android for the Beagleboard) I am creating a custom UI (Launcher, menu screen, settings, everything) to go over the base Android for ease of use. My current HMD is probabbly going to be scrapped for a much much better system which I may be able to see in the coming months. If all goes according to plan, the current EyePC page will be heading somewhere else soon........

I am setting up my own personal blog which will have updates of my life (A 14 year old geek) and the multiple projects I am working on including what the EyePC is turning into. I am still a huge Droid lover, and want to include it and the community into this project. I will be posting links here later, and I want to thank everyone again for your support and kindness.

If you want to contact me, you can email me at:

trsohmers@mit.edu (Gotta love that, eh?)
trsohmers@eyepc.info (For EyePC related stuff)
trsohmers@gmail.com (Just for chat purposes)

This is the place where I first started posting this project, and it would be great to have the Droid community continue on with any suggestions, questions, and anything else.
 
Thanks! My friend said he is getting the Incredible the day it comes out, so hopefully he will let me play around with it for a couple hours.
 
With the FiOS remote control app you can display pictures from your Droid to your television. If it can do this it should not be hard to stream video!

Sorry, see someone already mentioned this.
 
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