First of all, thanks for all the nice stuff, @cyberboy666, I really appreciate having more DIY video toys to choose from.
I’m planning to build a pretty insane wearable a/v setup and I’d like to use a custom pcb’d (or probably just hand-wired protoboard) recurboy as the basis for the video part. As I want everything to be on my body, I’d rather avoid having USB cables dangling around that need to be un- and replugged. I guess I could do it with a 3-way switch, but I’d much prefer to be able to use the webcam, Keyboard and/or MIDI at the same time.
So I was wondering: Is this is a hardware limitation of the Pi0 or could the code be modified to accept a hub on the OTG port? If not, I guess I could live with having to switch between webcam and keyboard, but would it be possible to make it accept MIDI over serial instead of USB?
Also, I wonder if there’s any way a recording function for a live feed could be added. I guess it’s been left out for being too much for the first Pi0…? But would a Zero W 2 bring enough processing power for this?
Ah, and I have to admit that I haven’t really looked at the code so far, because I’m definitely more of a hardware guy and whenever I start looking at code, my vision blurs a little and my brain wants to do something else NOW. But if any of my proposed mods are possible, can you please give me an idea how hard they would be to implement?
sorry for the late reply on this question @derWarst
i was unsure whether it would work as is with a usb hub plugged into the otg cable - i did test this in my studio and it didnt seem to be working out of the box with usb hub. but im pretty sure it would be possible to enable somehow… i will add this as an issue in the recurboy repo. and when im next working on firmware can try figure it out… but in the meantime if you figure out how to enable let me know!
its a good question! yes it was left out due to pi0 limitations… and infact it wwasnt even that stable on the recur with a pi3 - so im still skeptical of it working well on recurboy… but its def worth a try!
i would say that enabling usb-hub might just be a setting somewhere so quite easy…
midi over serial was working well on the recur project… you could take a look at the incur schematic to see how it was done hardware side… then on software… under the hood recurboy uses this openframeworks extension for midi - i think it would be possible to read off serial here but not sure (r_e_c_u_r uses a python package for midi so code wise thats different)
under the hood the recurboy makes calls to this library (kind of a wrapper around some different ofx addons) ]ofxVideoArtTools - this is the same backend that recur uses where recording video was implemented… so the calls should already be there you just need to expose them on the recurboy… so hopfully not too difficult to attempt…
let me know if you decided to tackle any of these things and i can give some more specic advice
Also interested in the USB hub issue, I was considering ordering one of these (or similar), which hook up to the back of the Pi 0 with pogo pins to connect to the USB pads, and then using it to hook up a USB stick for media, a capture card (e.g. EasyCap) that I can power off with a switch mounted somewhere in the case, and a spare port connected to a USB extension lead for a webcam or MIDI controller. But if hubs don’t work that’ll be a big problem…
All I can find regarding this issue is articles saying it works by default, because everyone seems to use raspian or something similar…
I guess I’ll try it if I can get my hands on a Zero 2, but it sounds like I shouldn’t get my hopes up too much… There’s other boards using the same form factor, like Banana, Orange, whatever. Some of them supposedly have more powerful chipsets. Do you have any idea if one of those would work at all?
If all else fails, I might just get one of those tiny FPV DVR’s, but it obviously wouldn’t be as comfortable as handling it directly within recurboy.
I had a look at the source in the meantime and found the respective code. Nice to know that it’s there, and easy to implement.
I got the idea whe realised that the RX and TX Pins were unused, so it felt reasonable. I actually also looked into the r_e_c_u_r code and found out about the python bit. Would it make a difference at all if MIDI was connected through serial instead of a hub?
Most of the parts have arrived by now, so I guess I’ll get into building it at some point, eventually.
There’s other boards using the same form factor, like Banana, Orange, whatever. Some of them supposedly have more powerful chipsets. Do you have any idea if one of those would work at all?