Broadcasting Analog TV on an ESP8266!

[@brandonspears2028]

Looks like we finally found the person responsible for the Max Headroom incident.

[@AppliedScience]

That is fantastic! Nice work!

[@adwait9806]

Hey ben!

[@Mr_ToR]

am I the only one thinking that this looks like the tech in Alien (1979)? visuals, gfx, the feel, it's awesome. nice change to all the crisp clear stuff we have now :-)

[@CNLohr]

Retro time!

[@octocat7949]

Exactly, I guess we could make a radar!

[@LeoTakacs]

Looks like I'm gonna be up all night watching your videos.

[@RobinMgp]

Hey fancy seeing you here! I watch your channel!

[@DavidRea]

Wow, never realized the '8266 had this kind of horsepower! Amazing what you can do with DMA and a high speed serial port...

[@stevy2]

I thought it was an ESP32. I can't believe the 8266 can render 3d meshes AND broadcast analog video at the same time.

[@AlanMedina314]

Finally a video of the 8266 being put to honest work. Most videos are of trivial applications and fail to tap into its potential. I have 8266 and all I want is to generate 3d animation on it, your video helps to get me started. Thanks for sharing your source.

[@CNLohr]

Give it a shot! I hope for the best!

[@TimoBirnschein]

@CNLohr, my massive complements to your channel! I follow you for a while now and I'm blown away be almost every single video you put up! This is one of the most extreme ones. It is a big mystery to me why these modules are so cheap. Until now, I haven't tried them but they get more and more appealing every single time I see a project with these... Keap up the great work!

[@CNLohr]

+Timo Birnschein I'm really glad. A lot happened in my life that pushed off hacking and videos, but, now, I am starting to get more time and hope to keep going!

[@Manawyrm]

Holy... this is absolute madness. Really, really, really impressive!

[@CNLohr]

+Tobias Mädel (Manawyrm) Thanks - your projects are quite impressive as well! It always surprises me when other serious people in the community find what I do cool.

[@ObiWanCannoli]

Kids in Africa could have eaten that NTSC frame

[@niter43]

Absolutely awesome. That's what demoscene should look like these days.

[@pacman10182]

you never cease to amaze me with this stuff.

[@AwesomeGames56]

You never cease to amaze me!

[@prateekmahajan1929]

Same goes for the esp8266-01 module which had fewer breakout pins so it's termed as a WiFi module, whereas it is very capable

[@joeo6378]

Finally a system I can broadcast my DOOM gameplay with.

[@CNLohr]

yessss

[@مقاطعمترجمة-ش8ث]

@@CNLohr Hi there big fan here 😍

[@code4food]

Awesome project. Can confirm this works using NodeMCU devkit with a simple breadboard jumper cable as antenna.

[@ruchirahasaranga8076]

which pin you connected the wire?

[@mark879]

Hey CNLohr, I really want to support you in some way. Your videos are so novel and impactful, I constantly crave new ones. Will you please create a Patreon account?

[@KennethTanFotografie]

Amazing, speechless. Hacker video of the year!

[@k_xx]

Absolutely crazy. Very nice demo!

[@michelepace5972]

This is the most incredible thing i've seen in years. hands down. John Carmac kind of tech miracles

[@CNLohr]

Check out the follow-on video, "Broadcasting COLOR Channel 3 on an ESP"

[@iamhumanize]

@3:20 sounds like someone having some mixed drinks

[@hadtomakeachannel]

That looks so cool. It's exactly how we imagined the future to be in the 80s...

[@onjofilms]

That thing has more features and power than my Vic-20! At least my Vic-20 had a keyboard.

[@juniorjpdj]

You can connect one with PS/2 ;P

[@marianofpv]

@@juniorjpdj Some boards have bluetooth, maybe it can be used with modern mice and kbd.

[@sikotryne]

I am blown away. Pushed so hard on the subscribe button that the laptop made bad noises!

[@prateekmahajan1929]

"Little chip that was designed to do more than a lightbulb" that's what I tell everyone

[@lildizz6694]

analog is technology (unless you have military training) is obselete to the newer generations.when emp,solar flares (storms), ect. come.I think its great your showing this bc we need to keep young minds fresh to this and older minds as well.thumbs up!

[@donaldklopper]

Wait, WHAT?

Who needs arduino anyway?:)

[@asasyan1]

Look if you need small project and not so fast processing speed why not?

[@wesofx8148]

A moment of silence for analogue public broadcast television

[@EditorDudesPlayList]

RIP

[@greysky1252]

I really want to broadcast on uhf. I mean it's all blank channels now. It's free real estate.

[@paulkocyla1343]

That´s real life magic! Seriously, you´re the g0d of bare metal!

[@CNLohr]

I work toward it. I just want everyone to see how wonderful the world could be if we started getting rid of all the extraneous layers of gunk we put around software.

[@DanteEdward]

This looks to me like it would be a great starting point for some kind of a free-to-use broadcast chat network that doesn't use the internet.

[@billysgeo]

What? No PAL... sad!

[@davidbarradine7902]

Damn, just thrown out my analogue TV, gutted. These devices are incredible, I'm currently putting an esp-01 in a model train using a pwm output to change speed and control it from a smartphone app.

[@CNLohr]

+David Barradine You were a fool :-p. And awesome. The internet needs more ESP projects.

[@czbero]

the emission spectrum of such thing must look lovely indeed

[@proccessingunit2337]

Leave it to CNLohr to do something like this, with a literal toaster computer. Good job!

[@hernan8640]

Beautiful stuff this shit has potential for many applications within the holographic universe

[@Membrane556]

Bought some modules and I'm going to try this as soon as they arrive.

[@ChrisFredriksson]

Wow! Awesome =D I'm glad I got a bunch of ESP8266s already =D with all these crazy projects they are soon to be banned or skyrocket in price or something.. You know, if something is too good for us general pop, someone has to destroy it for us xP Just kidding, but wow.. what a great project!! Where do you get all your ideas from!? I.. just.. well.. really awesome video!! =D

[@CNLohr]

+Chris Fredriksson Glad you liked it! Why would anything happen to the wonderful ESPs?

[@ChrisFredriksson]

+CNLohr - Well just because it is a thing that is too awesome =D It could probably be used for well.. dumb stuff as well, so goverments finds out about that and bans it ... well, I doubt it.. but you never know.. Other fun stuff has been banned before, or put under restrictions xP hehe

[@XerotoLabs]

+Chris Fredriksson shh don't give em any ideas man . They ( governments ) are fully capable of locking away all our source of fun . so many things use them it's mad.

[@jakelancaster5889]

I'm sorry, but what?!

[@Dziomolek]

dude.. your channel is a gold

[@Patchuchan]

I just tried it and used an old Zenith B&W tv to receive the signal and holy crap it works.

[@CNLohr]

+Patchuchan There is something magical about this chip. It feels like there's no way it should be able to do any of the things it does.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Damn cool project! Nice guitars too.

[@CNLohr]

Thanks!

[@merseyless]

I knew i'd been saving my old analog TV for something. Now to figure out how PAL works.

[@CNLohr]

+merseyless Shouldn't be hard at all! It should just be changing some numbers.

[@Jonathan_101]

THAT IS REALLY COOL

[@nogthree]

Literal sorcery, nice work!

[@heyarno]

I did see these modules on ebay and wondered if they are good for anything interesting. Thanks for this inspiration.

[@CNLohr]

Those modules are AOK.

[@andreamitchell4758]

would it be possible to make an esp8266 work with zigbee? does it have the physical hardware to emulate a zigbee TX or RX ?

[@RobThePyro]

Duuuuuude, -speechless- you know your stuff man!

[@CharlesFormanWonderUnit]

MAN - your videos really make me feel bad about myself! They are TOOOOO good. Keep it up. Idea: someone ported the Sega Master system to the ESP a while back. Combination? :D

[@ovalwingnut]

Holy Crap... Color me IMPRESSED.

[@CNLohr]

Check out the color version "Color Channel 3 on an ESP"

[@emremutlu44]

When I see Analog TV : *HACKERMAN !!!* You are fantastic dude :D

[@ExclusiveEntertanmnt]

this is what these video tutorials are good for... development forum... heard people say lunatcs have genius minds... have to be a lunatic to entertain sending an Analogue video signal... on a ESP8266. The genius part ... being ... configuring it to work... thanks for the Github link... have to see what the hell you did...

[@MikePoirier]

Fanta .. bulous !!! all that power for $5 ... Unreal ! Thanks for doing this. Love your work , thanks a million for sharing.

[@sgiox]

+Mike Poirier It's unreal because it costs even less then $2 now :)

[@HeyPatch]

This just blew my mind!!! I’ve gotta get me one of these to play around with. I’ve hit an old boom box with a tiny B&W crt built in, it be cool to use this to transmit a video meter or some kind of music visualiser, could you transmit audio, or is that asking to much? Anyway, fantastic video man, thanks for sharing. 😁👍

[@KabelkowyJoe]

To transmit audio on 80MHz carier, signal would have to be modulated by 6.5MHz analog carrier witch have to be modulated by analog audio signal. Triple layered analog modulation. Witch would be possible if you add some analog filtering and modulators. 6.5MHz carrier and audio itself could be created by ESP as well by PWM. Simplest modulator can be made from single transistor having coil+capacitor filter in collector. Need 1 for each carier. I assume 3-4 transistors max to be used 1 coil, 1 crystal and 3 GPIO's.

[@Bits32]

This is actually awesome!! Keep up with the good work..

[@CarlosRibeiroRC]

Wow! Congratulations man. Amazing!!

[@slavric]

You are crazy. In a good way. I have to pick up my jaw from the floor now.

[@CNLohr]

Check out ESP8266 Color Channel 3.

[@bitluni]

love your work

[@MatthewLong8]

Damn Son! pwning that ESP8266

[@SirMo]

This is seriously amazing.

[@cityofkaycityofkay3214]

Is it difficult to make an RCA TV? I think it will be very useful for many people.

[@BarackBananabama]

Reminds me of my first time to keyin an Applesoft BASIC 3D computer graphics program to see hidden lined function graphs on TV .... minutes later.

[@CheeKiatTeo]

This really should have more views.

[@donaldklopper]

it's because people don't believe in unicorns... I too find it hard to believe what I just saw...

[@CNLohr]

Check out color channel 3 then!

[@JacekBorecki]

wow.. I'm speechless. Great job!

[@elpinguinofrio4911]

wow, man! it's amazing!

[@GianCarloSalvati]

great!! so you can transmit FM signal when overclocked? and RDS text? like a portable RDS / FM wifi portable station

[@CNLohr]

+Gian Carlo Salvati FM would be hard, and realistically, any further transmissions really need to be made at 1/2 the 80MHz or less.

[@GianCarloSalvati]

+CNLohr great work. I use some like this: m.instructables.com/id/Raspberry-Pi-Radio-Transmitter/ and want to.build RDS+TA station to receive from internet (waze) traffic announcements on my GPS on car.

[@CNLohr]

go for it!

You are blowing my mind once again. Where are you getting all this ideas? I could barely get it to show a webpage, switch a relay and pull SPI sensor without bottlenecking it. I can't even imagine what you'll be able to do with esp32.

[@CNLohr]

+Uroš Golob I don't think the ESP32 is going to be as cool for ridiculous projects. I think the ESP8266 is that cool /because/ you can do so many things with it that shouldn't be possible.

[@leonidfromme748]

Really impressive! Thank you for sharing this video!

[@CNLohr]

Thanks!

[@JerryEricsson]

Hi, I am a snowbird, and left all my mod 12's at home in the Dakota's all i have along are some 1's and a couple of 201's with the development board. I doubt the 1 would have the pins to do this. Just wondering if you thought I could get it going on the 201 board, or even using the large development setup?

[@CNLohr]

+Jerry Ericsson I don't know what those boards are, but check out my most recent video - I'm able to do it with the jankey 4-pin ESP, since it's the RX pin that I broadcast on.

[@CorporalDanLives]

This is delightful!

[@ThingEngineer]

Amazing work!

[@colonelk3000]

Thanks for inspiring me to at least try and attempt to use my brain. I'm nowhere near your level, but I'm having fun.

[@Skywalker-zu7od]

Guy shaking martinis in the background, lol.

[@will11m]

+JBG Nope, whiskey sours: ruhlman.com/2012/05/friday-cocktail-hour/

[@Skywalker-zu7od]

+will11m haaa, nice, even better

[@memoriasIT]

Amazing job man, good job

[@mark879]

Holy effin hell. My mind is so blown right now. Awwww, wow!

[@thadfairbanks5338]

wow, that is sooo cool, time to bring back analog TV with underground channels. I bet the FCC would not like that! lol

[@CNLohr]

They probably don't like much else I Do.

[@darkrasen]

I'm blown away

[@willyarma_uk]

That is astonishing!

[@serge_schumacher]

That is f...ing awesome!

[@Rial_box]

Hi I'm have esp32-c3 and I try modulator FM signal use or algo or i2c but nothing and I don't put my hands down

[@VeganRashad]

Wow this is crazy as hell!!! I love it.

[@dosgamer74]

VERY nice work!! :-D One minor criticism - it needs more Utah Teapot ;-)

[@CNLohr]

+dosgamer74 I looked at that and gave up. If you write code that dumps out line segments for one it'd work!

[@ЯрославМироненко-р2ш]

It is excellent! Thank you for work!

[@almondjake1]

Awesome work man!

[@someoneyoudontknow106]

this is mind blowing

[@outaspaceman]

Here I am, 8yrs l8r, wondering how different my life might have been if I’d seen this back then..🤔 Certainly there’d be fewer Oscillagraphs in the world, as that was the only thing I could think of to do with 5in, Generic B/W TVs…😂👍

[@wei48221]

This is amazing!! Awesome video!!

[@bennguyen1313]

Very cool! I understand the NTSC standard defines all the voltages and timing for a field/frame, but it doesn't specify how to transmit it over RF.. how did you know what modulation to use, or the frequency, etc?

[@CNLohr]

You just modulate it up. Honestly I just looked at the wikipedia page on NTSC. The luma value just becomes the carrier, and the amplitude is inverted.

[@sagarmakhija1994]

hey, this looks interesting project my question is with the help of esp8266 can we receive signals from analog instead of broadcasting the analog signal and display it on a webpage, or save to sd card as a video file or anything similar to it?

[@ZL1CVD]

Great job!

[@CNLohr]

hanks!

[@debashisdas7557]

Thank u so much for this videos you are mkng with esp8266 is mind boggling.....

[@CNLohr]

Thanks!

[@christopher8199]

wow... I never knew the esp had that much power

[@rondlh20]

Amazing, great job!

[@davidconsumerofmath]

WOW. We're living in the future

[@jamesmaxwell381]

Excellent work! liked and subscribed

[@dilipsripuram6004]

@CNLohr Can we use a cluster of these to transmit digital signals...like hdmi display at 1080p ?

[@WashingtonLisboaEE]

Very god! Congratulations!

Can the I2S used for much slower transmission? Like in the kilohertz territory? So basically I'm interested if it can be used to produce a crude analog audio.

Nevermind, i think I've found my answer. This project uses I2S to output 5-bit PWM audio. Great :) hackaday.com/2015/06/06/esp8266-as-a-networked-mp3-decoder/

I see that I2S is outputted on the same PIN as the UART RX works. Does this mean that it will not work with any development boards where the USB UART is hardwired (like NodeMCU)?

[@CNLohr]

+István Nagy Going to reply to all your posts at once here... I2S is used usually for outputting high fidelity audio, through a DAC, or inputting from a DAC. It can be used at almost any divisor of 160 MHz. There is another piece of hardware, the 5-bit PWM is separate from the I2S system. Regarding pin usage, you can use this with those systems, however, you would need to re-enter the bootloader any time you need to reflash it to that level.

Great, thank you for the answers! :)

[@duckquacker]

I need some help flashing, my esp just spews out errors in the serial monitor after flashing channel3, it doesn't do anything either, I have tried wiping the flash and trying different flashers, but still no, it will work with a normal arduino sketch though.

[@---qt8bc]

same

[@kekagiso]

I wanna ask a negative sounding question but it's really for the right reasons... Is there really a point to learning how NTSC and PAL works considering that they're pretty much dead technologies moving forward?

[@ZuNunchaku]

+kekagiso ??? we event still learning AFK OOK modulation, that what hacker/maker do. to hack or make stuff you need to learn from basic and all the pass technology so you can make new technology.. so fast question for you, did you know who invent the wifi and bluetooth transmission? on what era? and on that era what TV technologies that we have? and yet we still using bluetooth and wifi until this day

[@MoiDeCoentro]

+kekagiso curiosity is always a good reason ... I heard Maxwell Equations had little purpose at the beggining, like a hobby, but today everything depends on it... an extreme example but to show curiosity is good

[@kekagiso]

I understand curiosity and I'm all for that, but my question is more about practicality, there's so much to learn and it keeps increasing every year, you can't expect to know everything so is it practical to learn aging technologies when you can focus on digital video rather?

[@CNLohr]

+kekagiso "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it" holds in engineering as well. Things like why the chroma signal is 180 degrees out of phase every line, or understanding aspects of how signals can be synced in yesteryear can lead to very efficient current day implementations of analogous systems.

[@Aemilindore]

And you're a great philosopher too. I wish to be as wise as you one day.

[@TheVirIngens]

Did you seriously censor the word "bitbanged"? and even the "bit" part of it, not the "bang"

[@CNLohr]

+vir ingens I did that because it's not bit banging technically. It's hardware assisted so you can't call it bit banging. I mis-spoke, so I censored it in post.

[@netsurfer10000]

+CNLohr i thought it was an audio hiccup.

[@joao.henrique]

damn, this is amazing ..

[@mohinderkaur6671]

Great Work!