Close
0%
0%

Video Input Delay Meter

An FPGA-based video input delay meter using a DVI output chip and an amplified photodiode light sensor

Similar projects worth following
This project aims to measure the digital video input delay of TVs and monitors to within 0.1 milliseconds. It uses a Digilent Nexys A7-100T FPGA development board to send an image to a display using a SiI 164 DVI output chip from Lattice Semiconductor. Lit pixels on the display are detected with a circuit built from a photodiode, an op-amp and a comparator. The FPGA board reads the detector's signal to calculate and display the input delay.

The circuit measures input delays to groups of pixels at various positions around the screen using a 720p signal at 60 Hz. The HDL code (SystemVerilog) could be customized to accommodate other resolutions and framerates without too much effort. The development board could also be used to test the VGA input signal path of a TV or monitor. The 720p60 signal was chosen in order to test TV input delays for a NES emulator project built on the same FPGA and DVI output hardware (project page coming soon).

I started this project to measure the input delay of the TV that I use for gaming. Specifically, I wanted to know what kind of delay I was experiencing when playing an FPGA-based NES emulator on the same FPGA and DVI output hardware. I'm pleased with the end results, and I think this project could serve as the basis for a more advanced input delay measurement tool.

For an overview and demo, check out the video on YouTube:



Components

The project uses a Digilent Nexys A7-100T FPGA development board for its FPGA platform. The HDL code is written in SystemVerilog, and all of the demos were synthesized in Vivado 2022.1. The DVI output is generated with the 24bpp-DDR version of the PMOD Digital Video Interface from 1BitSquared. It uses two adjacent PMOD expansion ports on the FPGA board. The light sensor circuit is built from an Everlight PD204-6C photodiode, a Microchip MC6291 op amp, and a Microchip MCP6541 comparator. It connects to the FPGA board through a ribbon cable and a hand-soldered, 3-pin PMOD expansion board.

The FPGA board and PMOD DVI chip were chosen because I already own them and have experience with them on much larger projects. The photodiode was chosen for its low cost, its visible spectrum response (be careful not to pick infrared only!) and its relatively fast response time. The Microchip ICs were chosen for their low cost, low voltage and power requirements, CMOS inputs (it's especially important for the op-amp to have virtually no input current) and relatively high speed. The ICs also had to be through-hole PDIPs for easy use on a breadboard / prototype board.

Design Goals

I jumped into working on this project without researching how other projects or commercial products perform these kinds of measurements. My goal was to measure the time elapsed from the moment a pixel's data is sent to the DVI chip to the moment the light sensor gets triggered. In order to meet an overall margin of error of +/- 100 microseconds, I designed the light sensor circuit with a response time bounded by about 25 microseconds, and I designed the pixel pattern generation and timing algorithm to have a margin of error of +/- 55 microseconds. My plan was to enable measuring the input delay at nine positions around the screen using a simple button and seven segment display interface on the FPGA board. My final design goal was to power the light sensor circuit using the FPGA's 3.3V supply voltage, i.e. without providing my own power supply.

Uncertainties and Challenges

My educational background is in digital design, and my career is in software engineering. I've only dabbled in analog circuitry as a minor hobby, so my confidence in the light sensor design is not very high. I think the strategy of amplifying the small photodiode signal and converting it to a digital signal with a comparator is a decent, textbook approach, but I don't have the experience to know whether it's totally sound. I'm also not entirely confident in the response time estimates. It would be much better to measure the circuit's actual response time with the one-shot feature of a digital scope. Unfortunately, I only have a 20MHz analog scope, and using it to observe the fast switching time of this circuit was difficult, if not comical.

I do, however, feel confident about the rest of the design. I had developed the 720p output circuitry for my NYDES (Not Your Dad's Entertainment System) project, and the remaining components of the design would be appropriate assignments for a first course in undergraduate digital design lab work.

Features Demonstrated

For readers interested in learning FPGA development or digital design, this project demonstrates several basic techniques:

  • Accessing I/O ports of development board resources and GPIO pins (PMOD ports)
  • De-bouncing noisy switching signals from pushbuttons or sensors
  • Safely synchronizing 1-bit signals from I/O pins or across clock domains (to avoid flip-flop metastability)...
Read more »

video-delay-schematic.svg

Schematic for the light sensor circuit

svg+xml - 89.49 kB - 04/23/2023 at 02:26

Download

  • 1 × Digilent Nexys A7-100T FPGA development board
  • 1 × 1BitSquared PMOD Digital Video Interface (24bpp-DDR) PMOD expansion board hosting a DVI output chip
  • 1 × Everlight PD204-6C Photodiode Photodiode used in the light sensor circuit
  • 1 × Microchip MCP6291-E/P Op-amp Low voltage, rail-to-rail, CMOS op-amp used to amplify the photodiode signal in the light sensor circuit
  • 1 × Microchip MCP6541-E/P Comparator Low voltage, push-pull, CMOS comparator used for the output stage in the light sensor circuit

View all 6 components

  • Iterating on a new wave of inspiration

    Mike Kibbel04/28/2023 at 01:00 0 comments

    This project appeared on the Hackaday blog, and I'm feeling new inspiration to iterate on the design. I will try taking on a few of the improvements I had brainstormed for this project.

    The first idea is to lower the cost barrier to entry with a cheaper FPGA board. A new Digilent Basys 3 board arrived in the mail today (less than half the price of a Nexys A7), so I'll start by porting the design to the new board. I'd like to also try some smaller boards in the future, so long as they can drive the required DVI clock speeds (148.5 MHz for 1080p) and have dedicated DDR outputs.

    The next idea will be to redesign the light sensor circuit to output an analog signal to feed into the FPGA board's ADC. Both Digilent boards have an Artix A7 with a 12-bit, 1 MSPS ADC. I'd like to be ambitious and try to do a PCB layout for the new sensor board, so I'll be sure to post about that.

    Beyond these changes, most of the other improvement ideas can happen in HDL and software, which is my comfort zone. I'd love to have a printed enclosure for the PCB, but 3D design and printing are too far out of my experience to try for now. If there are any takers, please send me a message!

View project log

Enjoy this project?

Share

Discussions

Mike Kibbel wrote 05/01/2023 at 13:57 point

Thanks for sharing these ideas! I didn't know about the Parallax Propeller II, and I look forward to exploring it some more. I see that the RP2040's programmable I/O (PIO) also has a lot of potential and is even available in the Pico.

Having detailed control over parallel I/O is what makes the FPGA so simple to use for this kind of application. In this project, it's easy to count exactly how many clock ticks (at 10 ns each) occur between outputting a pixel's data and detecting it on the screen. I would expect that one of the biggest challenges with using microcontrollers is synchronizing these events against a common reference clock.

If these chips provide access to a high-resolution clock, the I/O systems can generate interrupts at a predictable point in their outputs, and interrupts can be preemptive, I think we'd be able to write synchronization code that can reliably run within a known margin of error. For example, if we could configure preemptive interrupts for the moment when video vertical blank is sent and for when a timer fires for sampling the ADC, then we could start each interrupt handler by storing the current high-resolution timer value. A separate thread could process timestamped data generated by the interrupt handlers to stitch together the output results. The details would certainly be tricky, but it sounds like fun to try!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Kuba Sunderland-Ober wrote 05/01/2023 at 02:39 point

As a lower cost and lower barrier to entry alternative to FPGA, consider some modern MCUs.

An RP2040 MCU, e.g. on a Raspberry Pico is a good choice, or, for extra geek cred, Parallax Propeller II - P2X8C4M64P.

Both of the chips mentioned can output HDMI directly while having very simple software development environments, without extra hardware other than termination/matching resistors and capacitors perhaps, and an HDMI socket. Both have ADCs of suitable resolution and speed to detect the pulses, as well as timers needed.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Similar Projects

Does this project spark your interest?

Become a member to follow this project and never miss any updates