Video Overlay Device

photomankc

I'm building an RC rover on the 6WD Wild Thumper platform. Main controller is a PIC32 based board reading the RC receiver iBus protocol and getting that sent to I2C motor drivers. Kind of an over complicated RC car for now. I'm wanting to add an RF transmitted FPV camera to it and would very much love to include telemetry data of my own in the video, vs another RF link and device just to see that data. Not really looking for fancy animations or anything. Text and maybe some simple arrows and such.

I recall there being an analog video black box of some type back in the day that could do overlay text with a Propeller but I only see broken links and such these days. All the other stuff I see out there for on screen display seems to be dedicated to drone racing and looks to be largely tied to the flight controller in a 'just plug it in and it starts putting things on the screen' way. Not looking very adaptable.

I think the old one was called Propeller Backpack, but don't see anything but documents for it now. Any replacements for that device? I guess if I could find a known good schematic and firmware I could always build one up.

Wuerfel_21

Here's the documentation for the Backpack. It contains the schematic and descriptions of what everything does: https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/28327-PropellerBackpack-v1.0.pdf

iseries

Your looking for an OSD device that takes in the NTSC video and overlays text data on it and sends it on down to the display.

Here is one that I have used: OSD device.

This device is running some custom code that can be changed to maybe except serial data instead don't know.

Mike

Duane Degn

iseries wrote: »

Here is one that I have used: OSD device.

I was thinking of the same thing. Here's an aliexpress link.

I believe the serial protocol is open source but I haven't looked into interfacing with the device. I purchased one about four years ago but I haven't used it yet.

bnikkel

i use the MICRO MINIMOSD and it works great, you can customize whats info shows up on the screen using a free program on the computer.

photomankc

@bnikkel - Cool, I'll take a peek at that one. But it seems to be really aimed at ArduPilot and looks like it expects a certain protocol. Love all the data the videos show it displaying but sounds like i'd need to implement that protocol in my project. Pondering.

photomankc

Wuerfel_21 wrote: »

Here's the documentation for the Backpack. It contains the schematic and descriptions of what everything does: https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/28327-PropellerBackpack-v1.0.pdf

Thanks! I'd missed the schematic was in there. Looks like it would not be a dead simple project either to hand build. I may go the route of Arduino + the MAX chip but i'm still thinking on it. Thanks!