I made a VGA card that blew my mind

[@bitluni]

The board is available now: www.tindie.com/products/edit/esp32-s3-vga/

[@raw_000]

Replace "edit" with "bitluni" in the URL, otherwise theres a log in prompt to try to edit the entry.

[@johnhorton3727]

I just got mine delivered, haven't had time to play around with it but super excited. Great job as always bitluni.

[@nitram509]

Hi, since the boards are sold out, is there a chance you share the schematics, please? As a workaround, I thought ordering standard S3 DEV kits and attach the resistor array via a VGA breakout board.

[@antibrevity]

"Hidden under several convoluted abstraction layers" is an accurate description of high-level microcontroller development.

[@bitluni]

if you browse the github it gets really strange especially as with the versions there seem to be some major redesigns in the recent versions. and the latest one didn't propagate to arduino yet. and the main search always takes you to the head revision

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@nosferratu (crying in java dev)

[@Girvo747]

ESP-IDF is both really useful, and the bane of my existence at work :’) the GitHub issues list and commit history paints some wild pictures…

[@culan_SCP]

@@marcogenovesi8570 cries in breadboard

[@railgap]

correction: ALL modern development for all compute platforms

[@radnukespeoplesminds]

Its really incredible what people have done with the esp32 series of boards.

[@supernova86]

I designed a product with the S3-WROOM-1 to drive a 320x240 24 bit color LCD with integrated capactive touch screen! CAN and USB Interface included :P

[@Really2950]

Not “people”. Its bitluni. He is an old school genius. No one else has done what he has, a cut above the rest.

[@Rx7man]

@@supernova86 I'd love to know more about the CAN aspect of that, I haven't been able to get CAN to work on mine and it's kinda important to an automotive project I have

[@darekmistrz4364]

@@Really2950 You are wrong, there are many engineers that are doing great stuff with ESPs and for some of them you don't need half as much knowledge

[@Girvo747]

@@Really2950Bitluni is a champion! But no, there are plenty of people doing amazing things with these SoCs including at my work. Sadly a lot of it is hidden away in commercial products though.

[@MrRaizada]

There was a time in 1990s or late 80s when entire companies were spun around developing just VGA. Tseng labs, Trident, Video 9 etc come to mind.

[@llothar68]

Who has not developed for Tseng ET4000 chips in this days. Still remember this good old days when all hardware was 100% understood.

[@matyasnyilas]

I'd like to say A HUGE THANK YOU for what you're doing! You're an absolute god in the maker community.

[@AndyGraceMedia]

This is just brilliant. God-mode hardware hacking. Talk about pushing the S3 to its limits - even Espressif must be impressed with this. Now I'm off to watch all 4 hours of your livestream part 3.

[@bitluni]

i think part 2 was the one with 720p

[@DraconianError]

LCD Manufacturers should hire you. Congrats sir

[@FreezeS]

Just a quick note, from experience. Do not put vias in pads. The solder paste will get sucked into the via and the pad will not be soldered properly. Doesn't happen all the time but if you have a big production run it can mess up a lot of boards. It might even be that the pads make electrical contact but are not properly soldered and after they reach the customer the pin is moved a little during transport and doesn't make contact anymore.

[@prozacgod]

I saw him do that, and it set off my !! reflex, but I couldn't tell you why, I was like "wait, should you do that?" Good catch! I'm glad there's some experience around here helpful for us 'homegamers'!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Depends I think if they fill the holes in the vias then its ok. Castellated holes its called I think

[@SireSquish]

I know just enough to understand the question, but not quite enough for the rest. Where was he using the vias? Is he using a throughhole as a via?

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@JohnSmith-iu8cj: Castellated holes are something different. Filled vias can be either tented (with soldermask or something), or receive extra solder.

[@kwinzman]

Which timestamp shows the error?

[@DaT0nkee]

S3 was a VGA manufacturer. First i thought you connected an old S3 VGA chip to the ESP32, then i realized it is the ESP32-S3.

[@jonasniesner]

Great project, you are really squeezing everything out of the ESP32-S3. The new formfactor for boards with PSRAM is great. No need to have different footprints anymore. They now also sell one with 32MB of flash. I am thinking about using that one for OpenEpaperLink because it would allow for local storage of a lot of pictures.

[@jnharton]

If you need lots of local storage you can probably just add an SD card? On-board flash is nice, but it probably adds a lot cost/unit space.

[@yrath5034]

7:10 "there is also a complete loss of sync every few seconds" & 7:17 "this interrupt jitter moment is where some screens lose the sync completely (congrats on finding these texts :-) "

[@colinstu]

THANK YOU

[@SianaGearz]

Damn this Luni and his subliminal messages! 10:26 don't let you fool by the mode name; it's more like 40fps.

[@martincerny2938]

The way you handle the stencil is making me shiver. Hope you're using lead-free solder my dude. You have that stuff all over your workspace.

[@EShirako]

@@SianaGearz :D Thanks, that one was bugging me, I couldn't spot it and it wouldn't pause on that frame!

[@tim_remote_eater]

@@EShirako on a PC, when the video is paused, you can use the full-stop and comma keys to advance one frame forward and back

[@mysticmarble94]

Ohhhhh ... I just noticed 14:40 we have the same NEC MultiSync monitor. Always loved the display quality on that one. Unfortunately one of the buttons is loose on mine.

[@hstrinzel]

Stunning to see how the small resistors literally solder themselves and align automatically under the heat gun. Amazing.

[@Spritetm]

Fyi, the ESP32S3 RGB interface doesn't support the APLL because there is none in the chip, sorry. Next chip perhaps again :) I'll also see if I can convince the digital team to add the few bits you need for the higher-res modes in new hardware; even if VGA isn't that much in demand, I can see someone glueing TDMS converters to an ESP32 to get a DVI/HDMI solution.

[@bitluni]

yeah I figured ther is none 😅. as far as I remember the apll was always prone to errors. maybe too much to take the risk any longer. hardware tmds would be neat 🤩. but adding just another bit to total vertical lines might be even good for actual tfts. this weird shift with ring buffers from psram in large resolutions in 8bit is worth investigating... didn't have time to look into it too much. maybe fixable with a hack making the last buffer a different length for this chip if it's constant 🙈 hope you didn't take the criticism to harsh. you know I love you guys 😘

[@Spritetm]

@@bitluni Critisism is no issue, we're aware that there's limitations in our chips; you simply can't think of all use cases everyone will think up, and sometimes you don't have time or overlook things when designing stuff. The shift wrt psram is a known issue; someone below already mentioned it: in the S3, we derped on figuring out that the bandwidth to external memory may be limiting, so some peripherals have weird behaviour when interacting with it and overloading the bandwidth: for LCD, the DMA just outputs zeroes. That's actually the reason why the driver uses an interrupt to start a new transfer, it stops any DMA weirdness from permanently offsetting the image as the interrupt 'resets' the DMA and LCD subsystem, so a glitch only lasts a frame.

[@bitluni]

@@Spritetm reasonable solution. I think a comment in the code was indicating that. it was never meant to be used with the niche VGA. we all just try to massage some boundaries 😂 the high resolutions won't be useful anyways except for more or less static images and scrolling text since the bus is clogged and the blanks won't allow much updates in the framebuffer

[@KallePihlajasaari]

Dear @Spritetm Consider the needs of LaserMAME with ILDA as well. It would be great to have a compact solution on the market. "How is the ILDA connector pinout?"

[@ChannelJanis]

Great job. Just popped up in my feed. I was just thinking about such a project. Years ago at university I worked at project to create a simple game on FPGA and output video signal to VGA. Team mates were a year ahead of me regarding FPGA programming, so I worked just on PS/2 keyboard interface. Now when I thought about ESP32, I did not expect it to me that complicated and thank god I had another project in progress and did not try to jump into this rabbit hole. Great job!

[@Chickenguy2]

incredible, I can only dream at this point of developing the skills to complete a project like this

[@xanokothe]

this pcb service on europa looks pretty good 1 week boards are awesome, will definitely check it out

[@zigfisher6592]

Not bad at all :) I use JLCPCB. They make boards in 1 (one) day, then there is at least 5 days for delivery to Australia. The boards cost next to nothing, the DHL delivery is A$30 to A$50.

[@StephanEdelman]

This reminds me a bit of the work that Fabrice Bellard (the ultimate hacker god) did producing an ATSC compatible HDTV modulated signal from a video card. You rank right up there, bitluni. Nicely done, really.

[@spashristov8618]

Hey, I have been playing with one lvds display and esp32s3 and I have hit the similar scrolling issue. The scrolling image was caused by bottleneck between the external ram and the esp. The LCD DMA is faster than the QSPI. The DMA pump zeros until data is available and after that continues with the valid data. You could try to clock the ram higher. At least in my case it helped :D

[@bitluni]

how do you clock that? and where can I find your project 🤩 maybe I can prime the cache in the interrupt to get it ready in time. 🤔

[@labrat810]

Stuff like this is gonna be key in crystalizing a long-time dream: Analog high-refresh DIY large-format LED Display. I know it won't be me that makes it happen, but I keep seeing more 'parts' necessary to the concept, 'made real'.

[@GrizzLeeAdams]

I had a similar problem with the footprint from KiCAD and ended up modifying it to have oval shaped holes for the outer rows of pins. That was enough to make it compatible with multiple cheap variants of VGA jack from the usual suspects. The next time I'm going to modify the footprint for the shield ground tabs to ovals as well, to make soldering those easier and use less solder.

[@zombie-process7025]

I hate when sites have "footprint" files that are just png images of the part. I end up having to import them into inkscape, scale them properly, make a proper SVG and import THAT, making sure it imports at the right size.

[@marcsmithsonian9773]

I love this guy, when ge laughed operating CNC, its simple adorable. Good enginering is just a bonus

[@jimmy21584]

Those Aisler tips are useful. I went looking for an EU-based board fab and found Aisler right here in Germany, and I’m planning on using them more. I’ve done a couple of board runs with them already for my ESP32 robot and I’m super happy with the service and results, not to mention the shipping time.

[@Leif_YT]

Are they capable of doing long holes in the basic plans now? Last time I tried them my USB-C Ports would have made the board much more expensive because they didn't cover long holes in their basic plan. Went back to JLCPCB then, who don't have a issues with basic parts like USB-C Ports.

[@AryaFairywren]

@@Leif_YT they are capable of doing long holes in the basic plans now, since today =D

[@aislerhq]

@@Leif_YT Plated slots are now supported in the budget and blitz pool. :)

[@johboh]

Inspiring project! I can recommend "Interactive HTML BOM plugin for KiCad" for generating the placement map when assembling. With this, you don't have to re-map the components at Aisler. And also great to see Aisler supporting your project, I use them all the time and their customer support is awesome :).

[@aislerhq]

Thank you for the compliment. We continually work on providing the best support. When the project is set up correctly, there is no need to re-map the components. Unlike other tools, we automatically sort the components in a way that eases the placement and reduces errors. And as an added benefit, you can order assembled boards with just a few clicks after your verified your hand assembled prototype works because all the data is ready to go.

[@hstrinzel]

Absolutely brilliant work! Wow. You are squeezing out more of the ESP32 THAN ANYONE! Can Aisler (or YOU or anyone) sell fully assembled boards? I think it goes beyond my ability...

[@MattKasdorf]

I'm in the same situation, my hand to eye coordination just aren't what they use to be, I'd be looking for an assembled SMT device.

[@bitluni]

actually you can order assembled pcbs. they support several major part suppliers. I used it on one of my projects before

[@DadofScience]

God damn, that is a beautiful bit of work. The detail you go into with the design iterations and troubleshooting is greatly appreciated. Valuable content.

[@tejonBiker]

I really like to see graphics in embebed systems and this was a total pleasure to see

[@ultrasparc]

Delightful design. And memories of my old 800x600 Samsung CRT monitor + SiS6326 + Celeron 333MHz + NFS3.

[@confuseatronica]

i really liked the big throughole resistor network, but i guess its also fun watching the smc resistors swim onto the pads when you heat it

[@AC3handle]

Speaking voice: calm, cool, almost robotic. soldering and milling voice: ABSOLUTE MAD LAD!!!

[@KallePihlajasaari]

Dear @bitluni This was a great design. Thank you for documenting it. I get the idea that you are clever enough to also do one for the ILDA system. It might become the most popular interface if you can conform to the specifications. The discreet clock speeds might be enough to allow the ramping of the voltages smoothly enough. Your buffer system could be used to repeat the vectors. There was a chap on YT that used a VGA port to control a XY scope way back when so the concepts are similar enough. Search for "How is the ILDA connector pinout?" for a basic rundown of the interface. LaserMAME is a thing.

[@TheMason76]

Sehr schönes Projekt. Sehr gelungen Echt klasse was du da machst. *thumbs up.... Kleiner Tipp (evtl kennst den schon) : Es gibt fertige R-2R-Netzwerke in SMD. Das macht die Sache vllt noch kompakter und genauer.

[@l3p3]

Sieht aber nicht so komplex aus. ;-)

[@issacarwustrow7325]

I have absolutelly no idea of the usage of such a board but man, it was interesting (even not understanding anything) to see what I presume to be a kind of a DIY video card.

[@VideoKillah]

I subscribed at "with blackjack and circular buffers". Love the ingenuity and hard work!

[@Ruben_Oscar_IGLESIAS]

Excellent video. As usual, is a pleasure practice electronics with you! Thanks

[@phil2768]

Blows my mind you do all this and still get time to watch Futurama!

[@MyAmazingUsername]

This is incredibly impressive. The ESP32 is so weak yet very strong by retro computer standards. This is a very exciting project! :)

[@lels3618]

the dithered color banding trick is AWESOME!!

[@microcolonel]

This has inspired me to build a VGA converter based on line resampling and a fixed clock DAC.

[@paulvv5632]

Oh eM Ef Geez! Such a simple and brilliant idea.. Its sad VGA is totally gone nowadays.. So much great stuff was made in this era.. Two thumbs up for you, this is fascinating. You got me feeling amazed as i was watching it happen with you. This is beautiful magic you done here friend. I want this :D

[@mikeselectricstuff]

Neat! Maybe next time use resistor networks to reduce parts count..?

[@bitluni]

it's odd but using singular resistors is cheaper to manufacture sometimes 🙈 I still should try it at least

[@mikeselectricstuff]

@@bitluni For cheap parts, the cost of placing it can often exceed the parts cost, so a 4:1 reduction, and may also be able to save on PCB size. 4-way networks are under a cent at LCSC

[@bitluni]

LCSC only offers one 1% 150R and 300R option and both stocks are not very high. During the part shortage they had none, 🙈 i checked. on low batch size the extended part fee from jlc has also a significant impact. ontop 1% is already a bit high for 8bit. I wanted to keep the possibility to use 0.1%. Anyways, networks make sense for actual production runs where the sourcing has to be done anyways... i just bring excuses to not have to do the routing again 😁

[@justaneric]

hacker mode!! nice content, I really liked it, i ended up subscribing

[@Redditard]

Now that's what a good sponsorship is!!

[@andreschoen9180]

Outstanding work & love the Hat tipping to the original "Amiga" shop Demo graphics. Now if you can just add Planar mode, a Copper & Blitter 8^) Cheers from Oz

[@poptartmcjelly7054]

You can also PWM your LSB in the R2R ladder to multiply your DAC resolution by your PWM resolution. For example 8-bit PWM with a 8-bit R2R ladder can be combined to give 16-bit resolution.

[@TalpaDK]

Seems to be a bit on the impractical side with a pixel clock above 25MHz and often closer to 40MHz, there would also have to be added some filtering to the signal to prevent "sub pixels" in the individual pixels on higher resolution monitors

[@hikaru-live]

There are multiple HDMI encoder chips that takes the same input as your VGA resistor ladder and tolerates some clock jitter. You may want to create a version that replaces the VGA resistors with an encoder and emits HDMI.

[@trace9130]

I'm not even sure what this is for, but I watched the whole thing and it seems really cool.

[@Gunbudder]

back in my day, we bit banged VGA signals using nothing but an FPGA! and we liked it!

[@magiceireann]

Fantastic work Matthias, you are an inspiration to us all ❤

[@4ndrej]

0:53 the monitors setup looks nice

[@chetana9802]

This board van disrupt small companies which use old intel PCs just for vga signal Great development 😀 Thank you

[@andycynthia3604]

The sound effects are so much fun. 😄😆😂😂😂

[@moviewisdom5426]

SOoooooo cool. Can't wait to get my hands on THIS!! amazing work.

[@vetaliv4696]

Захоплива розповідь! Дякую що поділився! Вражений лабораторією. 😊 Успіхів!

[@Fahnder99]

brilliant! big thanks for the insides about syncing and such!

[@Tarbard]

Nice work. That Aisler software integration looks really helpful.

[@aislerhq]

Definitely give it a try!

[@m1geo]

Shame they're soo expensive in comparison to other manufacturers.

[@aislerhq]

@@m1geo We recently improved our budget board portfolio so you get more for less money. And we are working on expanding our portfolio with more low-cost options, but I cannot give you more details at this point.

[@rageofhero]

Vielen Dank für die Arbeit am ESP32 S3 VGA.

[@AndT2008]

this interrupt jitter moment is where some screens lose the completly sync completly (congrats on finding these texts 🙂 @7:18

[@umop3plsdn]

dude dude dude I NEEEEEEEED whatever that monitor setup is for programming right MEOW OMFG

[@hoomansarrafan9843]

very nice project! btw I read in one of the datasheets provided by essperif that cleaning esp32 modules with unltrasonic cleaners may damage the internal crystal oscillator, I thought maybe you could take look into the matter.

[@matrixfull]

I have no idea what is this used for but I love your enthusiasm : ]]

[@ccricers]

I hope to use something like this one day. Working on an emulator that I'd like to run on bare metal, and having stable 60hz refresh rates is important.

[@scottbebe2310]

Your video has answered my questions. Thank you very much for sharing this method that works for all platforms.

[@colemickens]

I went "oh dear god" when I saw the thumbnail. Excellent story/video/project. And a new channel to sub to :D Lets go! Also, you sound like "the guy with the swiss accent" (Andreas Spiess), who also does a lot of embedded stuff. :D Thanks for the video!

[@erickvond6825]

PCB manufacturers like PCBWay and JLC-PCB can build out the boards with all the parts and ship them for you if you wanted to make a much larger go of things like this.

[@antonnym214]

Beautiful engineering work. All good wishes.

[@DraconianError]

LCD Manufacturers should hire you. Congrats sir

[@Iskelderon]

Man, that's amazing! And probably still powerfuk enough for something like a cheaper Magic Mirror solution that only updates every minute or so.

[@TheRealBobHickman]

Awesome stuff, although the goatee is giving me evil Garthe Knight energy. Also, Aisler's tools look pretty handy.

[@aislerhq]

Definitely give it a try!

[@barthanes1]

Rolling pin on the keyboard is hilarious.

[@Roxor128]

A true VGA card uses 6 bits per channel. 5-6-5 may be the common approach to 16-bit colour, but the palette for 8-bit mode should be picking 256 colours from a 6-6-6 colour space. If you implemented a 3x6-bit DAC, you could easily support 5-6-5 modes as well as correct indexed modes by just shifting the red and blue up by one and outputting zero for their least-significant bits. It's not strictly correct, but it's close-enough, and I can buy that plenty of 1990s-era SVGA cards actually did it. Hell, later ones that support 24-bit colour probably do it for converting the VGA palette to 8 bits.

[@DFX2KX]

That is extremely impressive, doesn't seem like it'd be too hard to use one of these modules as the video solution to any number of DIY retro computers. VGA timing issues can cause some REALLY odd bugs. I remember having an old CAD/business graphics card which would do utterly bizarre things if the power in the house flickered at all, narrowed it down to Hsync going haywire when this happened. needed to restart to fix it.

[@FixationwithCarnage]

rolling pin on the keyboard was hilarious lol

[@Eigengrey]

You need to make an in depth video series of how vga card works. Awesome vid❤. I wanna learn more. From coding bg I could understand some but not entirely😢

[@andrewniles5390]

this has got me excited as a potential method to make a game console using software emulation. keen to get a board when they are available

[@amonynous9041]

I have no idea what this is, but I like it.

[@AndreasDelleske]

7:53 so sweet!

[@marknhopgood]

Amazing video. Gives me inspiration and encouragement to go forward with my electronics journey. Also v funny with the rolling pin on the keyboard. Thank you.

[@miheico]

It would be really cool to be able to use it for analog txv in FPV with custom cameras

[@tombrothers9456]

Love your content, have for years. Thank you 🙏

[@Jade4D]

PCB milling alone deserves a like 👍

[@jacquesb5248]

awesome project! there will be lots of uses!

[@StephanEdelman]

This is an incredible accomplishment. This is not straightforward to do and the devil is (as always) in the details. Well done, bitluni!

[@VovelPunch]

finally aisler makes some moves

[@TheOrganicartist]

mindblowning focus

[@dimeland2]

this is simply amazing! congrats on the new version! what is your soldering method/paste? I am trying to ditch jlcpcb assembly and impressed with your result!

[@DynamicSun]

wie geil ist das denn, mega work, diesen ESPVGA-Adapter kann man jetzt als Grafikkarte benutzen, für kleinere Chip-Projekte , die auf großen Bildschirmen laufen muss. cool

[@mysticmarble94]

I feel like you are getting a bit luni 💀💀💀

[@srinikhavijay43]

r/angryupvote

[@JB-fh1bb]

W

[@jerbear7952]

That is his name. Not exactly a joke

[@firdaus99031]

​@@jerbear7952that's the pun joke

[@0AThijs]

Adapters are what I live for!

[@L30NBL4NK]

This is downright stunning, could you please try to display a desktop OS with this card? Like Windows 98, XP or 10. It would fully satisfy my curiosity about how it would render with a desktop solution.

[@DJdoppIer]

Omg this stuff is incredible!

[@TheRainHarvester]

It's like 1990s again! Congrats

[@MostlyPennyCat]

I'm already a software engineer but i know what i want to do now. I'd kill to have this as a new job.

[@mohamedgendia4274]

You have made great work congratulations and thanx for sharing this ❤

[@RailyardProductions]

How about a video on how to use ultrasonic cleaner for PCBs. What chemical do you use?

[@DerIchBinDa]

Really nice project! I started to develop for the ESP32-S3 as well for a retro-computer project to make it easier to replace software on a cartridge by WLAN and using its internal PSRAM for some extensions. Really nice powerful modules, just a bit too few GPIO imho but nothing that cannot be fixed with some fast muxing and bitbanging.

[@Nene-8090]

I dont understand anything but this is so cool. So cool to make your own gpu 😄

[@tuanquynh0508]

Love your project.

[@Hoptronics]

Time to make your own projector now.

[@BryanChance]

I could barely understand what you are doing but it is exciting! -:)

[@RadicDotkey]

Ok, but can you push the framebuffer through the usb to it in realtime from a PC? If so you would make a lot of people using GroovyMame happy if it allowed us to skip all the heavy graphics APIs and video drivers.