Hi, I'm new here, but i've been reading the forum for a little while now.
Anyway, the project is this: I'm designing a telepresence system with a friend for my Uni project. The video system is quite complicated, and it turns out its going to be quite hard to do.
The video system kinda goes like this:
PAL Composite Video Camera on robot-->2.4GHz Transmitter-->2.4GHz Receiver-->PAL Composite Video Signal-->Olympus Eye-Trek FMD-20P VR Goggles
The goggle side of the system is designed to be self-contained and portable, so no access to a computer will be available for video signal conversion.
The trouble is, the goggles only take RGB with a composite sync. Having done some research, I have concluded that it will be very difficult.
There are plenty of IC's available that convert Composite->Digital RGB and then IC's that do Digital RGB->Analogue RGB, but these are complex to use SMD's and have fr more features that I require. I did find out that the V7021 IC's by Sony could serve my purposes, but alas, all the simple chips are discontinued and it seems that only these highly complex SoC's are available.
The complex chips I'm looking at are the Phillips SAA7114H and similar SAA711* IC's for input, the SAA7182 and similar for output or the Averkey AV250,AV251 for output. All these need a microcontroller to control them via I2C, which I can do using a PIC.
So, the question is, has anyone had any experience using any of these video processing IC's? I don't have the equipment at home or at college to confidently solder surface mount components like those chips, and I'd really rather avoid having to use them when so much of them will be going to waste anyway. Ideally, has anyone had any experience using the Sony V7021 and knows where I can get hold of some in the UK?