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This project is about creating custom hardware for the vast array of FOSDEM Video boxes.

FOSDEM 2019 had 27 parallel tracks, and each track has 2 video boxes. One for the room camera, one for the stream from the speaker laptop. These boxes do capture, h.264, and, in case of the speaker box, display the input stream on the projector. These are expensive, big, power-hungry boxes, filled with all sorts of hacks. A IR controlled hdmi scaler, an active hdmi splitter, a blackbox hw h.264 encoder... We have limited control over these devices, and are not very flexible.

We therefore decided to take it to the next level. Take our trusted Allwinner A20, with extensive mainline support, and add a hdmi decoder chip. Tie it to the capture engine, and capture frames. Then use the built in display engine to display reliably to the projector. Use the built in h.264 encoder to encode the video.

We are doing this by creating a custom daughterboard for the Olimex Lime2, and the design for this daughterboard lives in this repository.

It also requires some bootloader, kernel and user space support, and how this is set up is described here.