A TV Transmitter from an STM32

A TV Transmitter From An STM32 | Hackaday

Analog TV may have shuffled off its mortal coil years ago, but there are still plenty of old CRT TV sets around that could receive it. [Kris Slyka] has just such a device, and decided to feed it something from an STM32 microcontroller. An STM32G431, to be precise, and they’re doing it using the on-chip hardware rather than in software.

This unexpected feat is made possible by clever use of the internal oscillators and analog multiplexer. The video itself is generated using the MCU’s DAC, and fed into the on-board op-amp multiplexer which is switched at the VHF transmission frequency. This creates the required VHF TV transmission, but without audio. This component comes by abusing another peripheral, the internal RC oscillator for the USB. This is frequency modulated, and set to the required 5.5 MHz spacing from the vision carrier for the TV in question. It doesn’t (yet) generate the PAL color sub-carrier so for now it’s black and white only, but maybe someone will figure out a way.

We like unexpected out-of-spec uses of parts like these microcontrollers, and we especially like analog TV hereabouts. We marked its very final moments, back in 2021.

8 thoughts on “A TV Transmitter From An STM32”

I would love to do something with NTSC here with an ESP32 series chip. I’ve got a portable TV and would love to just have a static PipBoy on the CRT. Oh the fun my nephew would have from his Vault Dweller Opa. ;)

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You don’t have to transmit the signal over the air. It’s not hard to add a composite video input on a portable TV. You could use a single board computer with a composite video output like a Raspberry Pi Zero to generate the signal. It’s small enough that you could probably find a spot to install it inside the TV.

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Holy crap, that’s amazing!

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I don’t know a ton about such an implementation, but I do know that I was not expecting the VHF modulation.

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Back in 2016, Hackaday noted that TV could be transmitted from an ESP8266, and (in NTSC areas, anyway) in colour: https://hackaday.com/2016/01/31/tv-transmitter-uses-esp8266/

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Oops, sorry – colour came a week later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcez5pcp55w

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Kris is "she", not "he". Thanks!

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came here to say this as well, very cool project

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A TV Transmitter from an STM32

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