Say I have a program running on a host computer (Windows or macOS) that screen captures the main monitor at 60 FPS by fetching the GPU framebuffer and extracts some regions into separate video streams. I want to be able to render these streams on three separate LCD screens of about 7" at 60 FPS. What components would I need?
Requirements:
- The whole thing should be connected using a single USB cable to the host computer. In the end, the 3 screens will be mounted to a 3D-printed enclosure and the whole thing should be considered to be a single device from a user perspective. In fact, the user experience should be as follow: plug the "product" in a host computer, run my program, see the streams outputted on the screens. This means plugging some LCD displays directly to the host (whether it be via HDMI or USB) is not a viable solution (not enough ports and cumbersome). The end product should be self-contained and easily usable. What should be in the "product" to allow that is what I'm asking for now.
- The rendering process should be efficient / real-time. The input streams will mainly be audio visualization from a music production software, so the screens should have minimal latency (otherwise the visualization will be out of sync with the host audio).
Additional notes:
- Most of the job is done by the program on the host computer. It outputs ready-to-digest (properly sized) framebuffers and the only thing remaining is to display them on their respective LCD. I don't need any fancy microcontroller features; that's the only task I'm seeking to implement outside of the host.
- I've stumbled across a few products, such as this LCD, this driver board and this microcontroller. I've heard it would be possible to copy the framebuffers directly using DMA SPI, but I'm not sure how I could fulfil the real-time requirement of my project (hardware-wise, not software-wise). I've seen very limited numbers online, and I'm not sure these are the right tools for the job. I've also heard that this driver board was very good for its hardware-accelerated features, but not so much to copy full frames. As for this microcontroller, it seems like it has a lot more RAM than others like Teensy in this price range with comparable speed, which is good since I need to hold the three different framebuffers. Yet again, I'm not sure I'm looking at the right products. I'm an experienced C++ programmer, but I'm not super familiar with this kind of hardware, so I'm not sure where to look.
Which components would suit my project the best? Thanks.
Requirements:
- The whole thing should be connected using a single USB cable to the host computer. In the end, the 3 screens will be mounted to a 3D-printed enclosure and the whole thing should be considered to be a single device from a user perspective. In fact, the user experience should be as follow: plug the "product" in a host computer, run my program, see the streams outputted on the screens. This means plugging some LCD displays directly to the host (whether it be via HDMI or USB) is not a viable solution (not enough ports and cumbersome). The end product should be self-contained and easily usable. What should be in the "product" to allow that is what I'm asking for now.
- The rendering process should be efficient / real-time. The input streams will mainly be audio visualization from a music production software, so the screens should have minimal latency (otherwise the visualization will be out of sync with the host audio).
Additional notes:
- Most of the job is done by the program on the host computer. It outputs ready-to-digest (properly sized) framebuffers and the only thing remaining is to display them on their respective LCD. I don't need any fancy microcontroller features; that's the only task I'm seeking to implement outside of the host.
- I've stumbled across a few products, such as this LCD, this driver board and this microcontroller. I've heard it would be possible to copy the framebuffers directly using DMA SPI, but I'm not sure how I could fulfil the real-time requirement of my project (hardware-wise, not software-wise). I've seen very limited numbers online, and I'm not sure these are the right tools for the job. I've also heard that this driver board was very good for its hardware-accelerated features, but not so much to copy full frames. As for this microcontroller, it seems like it has a lot more RAM than others like Teensy in this price range with comparable speed, which is good since I need to hold the three different framebuffers. Yet again, I'm not sure I'm looking at the right products. I'm an experienced C++ programmer, but I'm not super familiar with this kind of hardware, so I'm not sure where to look.
Which components would suit my project the best? Thanks.