Arduino Raster Bars Redux

After sitting partially dismantled for about 5 years in a toolbox, I resurrected my old Arduino Raster Bars project. The primary reason for the endeavor being that I recently bought a video capture device that can digitize VGA signals, and I wanted a higher quality video of the output than the footage I filmed with a DSLR camera off the monitor. There’s a new video on my YouTube channel, see below, that shows the result and also explains the effect in a bit more detail.

The breadboard missed a few parts that I replaced, so it looks slightly different compared to the first iteration. Originally, I connected the VGA synchronization signals over resistors as a precaution. My monitor did not take issue with that, but the capture device lost the signal multiple times a second. Connecting the lines directly to the Arduino fixed that.

As you can see from the stills below, the quality from the capture device is significantly better. Also, the monitor stretches the 640×480 video mode to widescreen while the capture device leaves it in the intended aspect ratio of 4:3 (with square pixels).

Unfortunately, my VGA from Scratch project has been completely taken apart, so there’s no quick route to get a better capture of that project’s output at this point.