Realtime video

[mytekcontrols]

Yes I stand corrected (but only slightly ). You probably can generate video on a PIC and programmed in PicBasic, but I guarantee you it will still be quite a challenge taking this approach. And depending on your needs (which we know very little about), it still might not produce acceptable results. If you are just looking at producing a small number of units with this capability, then I would suggest using something like a BOB3 video board from these guys: http://www.decadenet.com/. Or for something even simpler (and much cheaper) may I suggest the SV1000 chip from: http://www.speechchips.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=7. Of course the BOB3 is much more capable, has 8 color text, hardware scrolling, and video overlay. But it will cost you to get these features.

If you do decide to roll-your-own, I would also suggest doing all the video generation with a separate PIC that communicates with another that runs your main code. This really would be the best approach (and similar to using your PIC with one of the above mentioned products), unless your needs are fairly simple.

Cheers,

[RUBiksCUbe]

I'm not going for somthing with a really high resolution. I was just interested in seeing if I could produce some simple video stuff, possibly even a game or two. I really wanted to use PB instead of ASM. Ill give it a shot in PB and post again when I have some results.

[RUBiksCUbe]

Just a quick question about assember: I'm trying to translate the "white stripe" code from http://www.rickard.gunee.com/project.../pic/howto.php into PicBasic and I came across the ASM statement "DNOP". I know very very little about ASM. What does this do?

[Luciano]

DNOP is a macro. (Two NOP instructions).
See instruction NOP.

Luciano

[RUBiksCUbe]

I tried the code that should generate two gray bars on either side of the screen and a white stripe in the middle on a tv and got a nice black picture. According to the info on http://www.rickard.gunee.com/project.../pic/howto.php I need to generate 3 levels between 0v and 1v. I used the setup he had where B0 goes through a 1K resistor and B1 goes through a 470 ohm resistor and I got output voltages of around 2.3 volts. I also think that my code might not be fast enough. I'm using the PAUSEUS command but Im not sure so Im going to hook it up to an oscilloscope tomorow and check it out.

[mister_e]

Perfect situation to learn/use MPLAB stop watch. That will teach you, at least, how PAUSEUS is acurate for a specific Xtal. You should have a look to that. Probing with a scope is also an option... for that, i'll prefer MPLAB stopwatch.

[RUBiksCUbe]

Ive been looking around the internet for info on the MPLAB stopwatch and I really have no idea what it is and how to use it. The most helpful thing I found was this code segment (posted by you, mister_e):

' Fine tuned with MPLAB StopWatch to get MainLoop = 1 sec
'
for delay=1 to 307
@ nop
next

[Luciano]

What is the video standard of your TV-set? (PAL or NTSC)