Pi's, even old 1st gen Pi's are great for projects like this. We used them to drive display screens around a University campus as they were much cheaper than the commercial offerings at the time, had no licencing costs and consumed a fraction of the power.
I used to have a couple of panasonic pal monitors from my old SVHS edit suite. In a moment of "i must declutter" moment i chucked them out, im regretting it now. I have a bunch of ATV kit for 5.6G i got at a DK stall at a ham thing a couple of years ago. Im going to get that up and running after xmas. great content btw :)
Hi Doz new viewer here. About five fields after your intro VO ended I’d already hit subscribe. Outstanding way to grab the attention of videoheads👍 Currently got that “I’ve just struck gold” YT feeling. Looking forward to trawling your vids. Cheers from Australia
I did something similar back in 2019 but with some differences. I did the pattern toggle through GPIO using uinput, without the need for the keyboard. fbi was using PgUp and PgDn on my setup so I had a Python script to use uinput to send KEY_PAGEDOWN when pin 18 was grounded. I also had vbit installed and pin 27 started the teletext server. I can share the Python code if you like? I don't use it anymore on account of having a genuine Philips PM5644 generator as well as the later PT5210. Additionally, not sure if you know this, the PTV/DK Audio (former Philips) test pattern generators (Test Card G to many UK folk) have been open sourced recently by the manufacturer, so the Philips patterns should be free to use, provided that they were derived from a PT5210/5230/5300 generator.
Sadly, the graphics chip inside a Pi doesn't allow anything else than a PAL or NTSC signal, and as it isn't VGA, there's no option for a MODELINE hack either.
@@AndyDoz Maybe now it's possible, if you want and know how to do it and have a 405 line tv, you can test for us:) It's a great thing because a converter it's too much expensive :(
Hi, I've tested it on everything from the very first models up to and including Pi4b. It won't work on pi400, and I don't know if pi5 still has analogue video output.
@@AndyDoz I have managed to get my Raspberry pi test card gen working, is there an easy way to switch from Comp video to HDMI, I managed to edit the config file to output on HDMI but of course don't know how to do for both outputs, if that's even possible.
Pi's, even old 1st gen Pi's are great for projects like this. We used them to drive display screens around a University campus as they were much cheaper than the commercial offerings at the time, had no licencing costs and consumed a fraction of the power.
I used to have a couple of panasonic pal monitors from my old SVHS edit suite. In a moment of "i must declutter" moment i chucked them out, im regretting it now. I have a bunch of ATV kit for 5.6G i got at a DK stall at a ham thing a couple of years ago. Im going to get that up and running after xmas.
great content btw :)
Hi Doz new viewer here. About five fields after your intro VO ended I’d already hit subscribe. Outstanding way to grab the attention of videoheads👍
Currently got that “I’ve just struck gold” YT feeling. Looking forward to trawling your vids.
Cheers from Australia
Wow. Thanks for the lovely comment. I hope there's some more stuff to interest you
Excellent video and work! Thanks for sharing
Thanks for watching. Happy Christmas
@@AndyDoz Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I did something similar back in 2019 but with some differences. I did the pattern toggle through GPIO using uinput, without the need for the keyboard. fbi was using PgUp and PgDn on my setup so I had a Python script to use uinput to send KEY_PAGEDOWN when pin 18 was grounded. I also had vbit installed and pin 27 started the teletext server. I can share the Python code if you like? I don't use it anymore on account of having a genuine Philips PM5644 generator as well as the later PT5210.
Additionally, not sure if you know this, the PTV/DK Audio (former Philips) test pattern generators (Test Card G to many UK folk) have been open sourced recently by the manufacturer, so the Philips patterns should be free to use, provided that they were derived from a PT5210/5230/5300 generator.
Nice project, would it be possible to add a 405-line output option? This makes it more usable for the older model TV sets
Sadly, the graphics chip inside a Pi doesn't allow anything else than a PAL or NTSC signal, and as it isn't VGA, there's no option for a MODELINE hack either.
@@AndyDoz Maybe now it's possible, if you want and know how to do it and have a 405 line tv, you can test for us:) It's a great thing because a converter it's too much expensive :(
Have you tried the command CD SNUTS?
Will this drive the same signal on the HDMI output as the composite output?
Should do, although I doubt the aspect ratio will be correct
I'm looking at making one of these, will it work on any version of Rasberry pie? it will be my first project using a pi so don't know how to use one.
Hi, I've tested it on everything from the very first models up to and including Pi4b. It won't work on pi400, and I don't know if pi5 still has analogue video output.
I've just looked online, it appear a Pi5 does retain the composite video output.
@@AndyDoz I have managed to get my Raspberry pi test card gen working, is there an easy way to switch from Comp video to HDMI, I managed to edit the config file to output on HDMI but of course don't know how to do for both outputs, if that's even possible.
@@ianhuxstep211 Not really. You'd have to change the config and re-boot.
Is there a way to generate the rf from the pi too?
Sadly not
I use WinSCP for SFTP in Windows
It can use login details from Putty too.
Is there any chance of getting a preloaded sd card from you. Can cover costs via PayPal. My laptop not playing ball at moment.
Sure. Go to andydoz.blogspot.com, and join the discord server using the link. Leave me a message and we'll sort.
Ok will have a go. thanks