This thread has been locked.

If you have a related question, please click the "Ask a related question" button in the top right corner. The newly created question will be automatically linked to this question.

TVP7002: MCU for video data generation

Part Number: TVP7002

Hi All,

  I have a requirement to drive a display which can be interfaced using HDMI cable. The contents of the display will be generated dynamically in C code. I have earlier considered Beagle Bone Black to do the job, but my requirement is as follows:

1. The system should not use LINUX OS, preferably a non OS based system is intended

2. The system must boot as fast as possible (no several seconds time taken for boot like LINUX OS)

  Can anyone suggest me a TI MCU which can be readily interfaced to chips like TVP7002 or NXP19988 (as used in BBB) to generate the HDMI signal? I am looking for an MCU which will give the 3x 8 bit data for the video along with the sync signals. Am also looking for supporting example codes for the MCU.

Regards

Soumyajit Das

  • One update, may be TVP7002 is not the IC which takes 3x 8-bit video data and converts to HDMI signal. But NXP19988 is the one with HDMI output.

  • Hi, Soumyajit,

    I am checking with internal video expert and will post back once I hear from him.

  • Thanks Rex, looking forward for your reply.

    Regards

    Soumyajit

  • Hi, Soumyajit,

    The expert replied the following:

    "I think the most fitting in our TI EP portfolio is the AM335x a used on BBB. You don’t need to run Linux, we provide bare-metal code and example projects as well as part of our AM335x RTOS SDK. And running bare-metal code on these devices should allow you to boot very quickly. I had a quick look at the source tree of the RTOS SDK and there seems to be some LCD related sample code but I’m not sure how much effort that would be to get brought up and adapted for the use case you have.

    If you think the lowest-end AM335x device with display would be feasible from a cost/system fit POV we can certainly look into this a bit deeper to see how feasible this is."

    Rex

  • Hi Rex,

    Thanks for your reply. Can you please post the link to the bare-metal code and example projects? I would like to go through them to understand the setup well.

    -

    Also, I was looking forward to get a single chip solution (MCU) not an MPU. I believe that for AM335x, I need to connect external FLASH & RAM chips. Correct me if I am wrong.

    But if no MCU solution is available, then going ahead with AM335x should be fine!!

    -

    Regards

    Soumyajit

  • Hi, Soumyajit,

    The person is currently out of office. He will post the example after he gets back on 2/20. At the meantime, I'll ask MCU group to see if they can help you.

    Rex

  • Soumyajit,

    I was looking at our RTOS SDK for AM335x earlier and found various display code in there and had assumed it would be applicable to that device, however upon further inspection it turns out this is not correct. While there is display code included and it is even partially getting build it in fact only applies to our newer K3-based devices (such as AM654x). All of this is just an artifact of how the RTOS SDK is getting packaged which leads to the inclusion of code that is not applicable to AM335x.

    Anyways back to square one then. There is a "bare metal" example of doing some display output in U-Boot by showing a splash screen on an LCD. But for one this is no longer maintained, and it also doesn't support HDMI. Some more info is here: https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors/f/791/t/829782

    I've reached out to two display/graphic subject experts internally to see if they have something that can be provided as a starting point and report back here.

    Regards, Andreas

  • Soumyajit,

    after talking to some folks internally it turns out we don't have anything beyond what I had hinted at earlier which is the U-Boot based approach.There is a driver here: drivers/video/am335x-fb.c. Also for HDMI you would need an external encoder (like on the BeagleBone) and there is a driver for that in U-Boot too: drivers/video/tda19988.c. With this you should be able to at least have a starting point for creating some true bare-metal type display solution.

    Regards, Andreas

  • Thanks to both Andreas & Rex for the above updates...