Genlock Dongle is ready for purchase in our shop.
Category: Genlock
Sample Videos by Four H3+B and Genlock Dongle
PCB of Genlock Dongle has arrived for us. Here are example shots by using it.
Tonight I went nearby streetcar station and test the dongle. The equipment is as in the following photo and four GoPro Hero 3+ Blacks.
(FYI: There are three dongles in the photo above; Connected, box opened, the reverse side.)
I set the cameras on the platform.
And shoot.
Note: These videos are completely untouched. No editing at all. This is why three videos are upside down. 🙂
Next post of this blog will be the announcement the item being ready for purchase. So stay tuned.
Genlocking HSYNC/VSYNC details
Here are screenshots of logic analyzer showing HSYNC and VSYNC signals while recording in 1080-30.
These signals are generated by the micro processor in the right bacpac of Dual Hero System. You can easily see that the periods are equal to those of lines and frames, respectively.
Note: The PCB for MewPro Genlock Dongle is on the way to our lab in Tokyo. We expect they will arrive in a few days.
Genlocking With MewPro
Building the first prototype of MewPro Genlock Dongle for GoPro Hero 3+ Black is finished. Our shop will sell it after PCB is ready.
As stated in our previous post, 3D video/photo captures by GoPro are very strict and accurate: They require genlock signals of not only VSYNC for every frame but also HSYNC for every scanning line. However, for slow microprocessors like Arduino it is impossible to generate high-frequency HSYNC, so we decided to use the original Dual Hero System as a function generator.
The following is a photo of the prototype we made:
Two green boards are “MewPro Genlock Dongle” prototypes. They are attached to master/slave bacpacs of a GoPro Dual Hero System (two orange boxes connected by a white cable). The master MewPro Genlock Dongle has a wired shutter release connected. The slave Dongle has a GoPro Hero 3+ Black with MewPro connected. The latter connection consists of four signals (and GND), namely, RS-232(Dongle Tx -> MewPro Rx), HSYNC, VSYNC, TRIG.
MewPro Genlock Dongle emulates GoPro camera, and as a result we succeeded in getting these signals. The signals can be fed to as many numbers of GoPros with MewPro as you like. The settings of master camera will be automatically copied to of these slave cameras by using RS-232, as original Dual Hero is doing it using I2C.
Schematics and source code for MewPro Genlock Dongle will be published in this blog when the PCB is ready.