dogbertius
Newbie level 3
Hi there,
I am a big Microchip fan, and have used their PIC products in a large number of my own independent projects over the past few years. My latest project is a VGA frame-grabber device. I want to connect it to the VGA-out of a video card, and then capture the VGA data and represent it (downsampled) on a simple cell-phone monitor screen of mine (which I already have up and running).
Unfortunately, even a powerful PIC like the PIC32mx6xx series is only capable of going up to 80MHz clock speed with a maximum sampleing (ADC) rate of 1 million samples per second (ie: 1Msample/s), [p][p]Although the PIC32mx line has many input ADC pins, it seems there is only a single analog-to-digital converter on the chip, and the various pins are just multiplexed to the same unit so we can have multiple "analog input" pins.
The project I'm doing would involve capturing VGA signals which consist of three analog lines (red, green, blue), along with HSYNC/VSYNC and pixel clock lines for synchronization. My bet is that I would need a chip that can handle multiple analog inputs without just sharing a single ADC-multiplexed unit, and would have to be capable of reaching clock speeds of at least 200-250MHz, as the VGA standard for a 60Hz refresh rate with 0.3 mexapixels of data (ie: 640x480) using a pixel clock of approximately 25MHz would require a chip far more powerful than even the most powerful PIC products offered by Microchip.
Does anyone have an recommendations? I am ideally looking for a chip that not matches the above specs, but that I can deploy with relative ease. Although, for example, I prefer having chips in an SP-DIP package so I can plug them into my solderless breadboards, I have the tools and parts needed to solder a 64-pin (T)QFP chip (eg: PIC32mx79f512H) chip to a DIP adapter so I can use it. So, have a non-BGA package or something I can work with by hand instead of using expensive machinery is necessary.
Additionally, I am looking for a chip that meets the above requirements, and is also easy to program, debug, etc. A PIC plus a PICKIT/ICD programmer/debugger unit is so easy to use and cheap to acquire (eg: $50 for a PICKIT3 set). Do the TI chips, for example, come in hand-solderable packages and the programming tool doesn't cost a fortune. Finally, I do most of my programming in C and assembly. I'm looking for a chip that I can write code for in C.
Thank you all for your time and assistance.
Included below is a link to a duplicate post on another forum I visited to maximize exposure to this question.
Microchip Forums link: Really fast chip for A/D processing
I am a big Microchip fan, and have used their PIC products in a large number of my own independent projects over the past few years. My latest project is a VGA frame-grabber device. I want to connect it to the VGA-out of a video card, and then capture the VGA data and represent it (downsampled) on a simple cell-phone monitor screen of mine (which I already have up and running).
Unfortunately, even a powerful PIC like the PIC32mx6xx series is only capable of going up to 80MHz clock speed with a maximum sampleing (ADC) rate of 1 million samples per second (ie: 1Msample/s), [p][p]Although the PIC32mx line has many input ADC pins, it seems there is only a single analog-to-digital converter on the chip, and the various pins are just multiplexed to the same unit so we can have multiple "analog input" pins.
The project I'm doing would involve capturing VGA signals which consist of three analog lines (red, green, blue), along with HSYNC/VSYNC and pixel clock lines for synchronization. My bet is that I would need a chip that can handle multiple analog inputs without just sharing a single ADC-multiplexed unit, and would have to be capable of reaching clock speeds of at least 200-250MHz, as the VGA standard for a 60Hz refresh rate with 0.3 mexapixels of data (ie: 640x480) using a pixel clock of approximately 25MHz would require a chip far more powerful than even the most powerful PIC products offered by Microchip.
Does anyone have an recommendations? I am ideally looking for a chip that not matches the above specs, but that I can deploy with relative ease. Although, for example, I prefer having chips in an SP-DIP package so I can plug them into my solderless breadboards, I have the tools and parts needed to solder a 64-pin (T)QFP chip (eg: PIC32mx79f512H) chip to a DIP adapter so I can use it. So, have a non-BGA package or something I can work with by hand instead of using expensive machinery is necessary.
Additionally, I am looking for a chip that meets the above requirements, and is also easy to program, debug, etc. A PIC plus a PICKIT/ICD programmer/debugger unit is so easy to use and cheap to acquire (eg: $50 for a PICKIT3 set). Do the TI chips, for example, come in hand-solderable packages and the programming tool doesn't cost a fortune. Finally, I do most of my programming in C and assembly. I'm looking for a chip that I can write code for in C.
Thank you all for your time and assistance.
Included below is a link to a duplicate post on another forum I visited to maximize exposure to this question.
Microchip Forums link: Really fast chip for A/D processing
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