Wireless tally and camera control for Blackmagic cameras connected directly to an ATEM switcher over WiFi.
Blackmagic supports camera control and tally signals back over SDI to many of their cameras. They utilize a program return feed back to the camera to send it both video and ancillary data. When you need a camera to be wireless, just adding a wireless video transmitter from the camera to the switcher looses the return feed including camera control and tally. This project aims to add camera control and tally to a wireless camera with as little complexity as possible.
This only adds the return video feed without camera control and tally. The reason is because SDI ancillary data is stripped out when converted to HDMI. Even a lot of SDI systems use a chipset designed for HDMI and therefore has the same limitation. Transmitting an entire return video feed is also very heavy, increasing the risk for interference over only transmitting the small amount of data camera control and tally takes up.
This project only uses a receiver on the camera. The reason this works is that it connects to the ATEM switcher directly over WiFi, the same way the control software does. The camera control and tally commands are then translated on device to be sent out over SDI to the camera.
It has not been tested yet, but should work with a Micro Converter BiDirectional SDI/HDMI.
No, this project does not rely on the BMDSDIControl library anymore.
Make sure that you have connected the LEDs correctly. Note that status LEDs should be connected to 3.3v while the tally LEDs should be connected to ground.
This readme is fairly incomplete. Some parts might be documented incorrectly and some not at all.
If you do not feel like building your own device, feel free to reach out to me and we might be able to sort something out for you. You can find my contact information in the contact section.
Before building your own device. Read the license section as that states how you are allowed to use this project in an easy to understand format.
This project is fairly modular. Multiple components can be enabled/disabled through the arduino/user_config.h file. Note that some also need additional hardware added to work. They are described in more detail below.
This project is based around the ESP8266 microcontroller. It has been tested with a Wemos D1 Mini 2.2.0, though any ESP8266 based development board should work fine with some configuration modifications.
- Soldering tools
- Multimeter
- A USB cable to connect the ESP8266 development board to a computer for flashing.
- Arduino IDE with ESP8266 boards manager installed (instructions here)
Download this repository from github and run the install script in the arduino directory.
On Windows it is the arduino/arduino_install.bat and on MacOS/Linux it is the arduino/arduino_install file.
This script copies over the required firmware files to be accessible by the Arduino IDE.
Debug logging prints information about what the microcontroller is doing over UART. On most development boards, the UART data is converted to USB and can be read in the Arduino IDEs serial monitor. By default debugging is enabled but can easily be disabled either as a whole or in parts. The main reason to disable debugging is for performance reasons as writing serial data is fairly slow.
Debugging is controlled using preprocessor macro definitions in the file arduino/user_config.h.
- To enable/disable debug logging for camera control only, add/remove the definition for
DEBUG_CC. - To enable/disable debug logging for tally only, add/remove definition for
DEBUG_TALLY. - To enable/disable all debug logging, add/remove definition for
DEBUG(definitions forDEBUG_CCandDEBUG_TALLYare not allowed to be defined unlessDEBUGis defined).
Camera control and tally over SDI is an optional feature. It gets the camera control data directly from the ATEM switcher over wifi and sends it to a Blackmagic camera over SDI just as if the camera was connected directly to the switcher.
The SDI communication is done with the Blackmagic 3G SDI shield for Arduino. Since this is a shield for an Arduino UNO, we also need a logic level shifter to handle the different communication voltages between the 3.3v ESP8266 chip and the 5v SDI shield.
The logic level shifter needs both 3.3v and 5v, however most development boards support being powered of of 5v by including a 5v to 3.3v voltage regulator. This can be utilized for the logic level shifter as both 5v and 3.3v are often available.
Powering everything from the same power source requires some kind of voltage regulator like a Wemos D1 Mini DC shield to reduce the 7-12v the SDI shield requires down to either 5v or 3.3v the ESP8266 development bord works with. It is designed to work with the Wemos D1 Mini development board and is easy to attach as they have the same footprint and pinouts.
Since the SDI shield only supports a maximum of 12v, it should NOT be powered by a V-Lock battery without an additional voltage regulator.
@todo This section is incomplete
- Add the logic level shifter between the Wemos D1 Minis I2C pins and the SDI shield.
- The default pins used are D1 for SDA and D2 for SCL. This is swiched around compared to what is normally documented for the Wemos D1 Mini to get the rotation of the board correct.
- If they are powered from separate sources, they might need a shared ground to work correctly.
- A word of warning. If the DC shield is connected to the Wemos D1 Mini when plugging in with power over USB for firmware update, it might fry both boards and maybe even the computer if you are really unlucky. The way I have solved it is to scrape off the traces from the Wemos D1 Mini between the USB port and the rest of the board to only allow power from the DC shield and not USB.
Enable the lines PIN_SCL and PIN_SDA in arduino/user_config.h and set them to the pins the SDI shield is connected to (through the level shifter).
Tally and status LEDs can be enabled or disabled individually.
On the ESP8266, any of the 16 GPIO pins between GPIO0 and GPIO15 should work along with GPIO16 (D0 on Wemos D1 Mini), even though is technically not a GPIO pin. The available pins on the Wemos D1 Mini boards have all been confirmed to work (D0, D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, D8, TX, RX).
Here are the pins available for triggering LED.
This pin is HIGH when the configured camera id is in the ATEMs PGM/Program bus.
This pin is HIGH when the configured camera id is in the ATEMs PVW/Preview bus but not in the PGM/Program bus since PGM takes priority over PVW.
This pin is LOW when the device has an active connection to the ATEM switcher.
One LED with an appropriately sized resistor for each tally/status (red and green LEDs should work with a 100 Ohm resistor on a Wemos D1 Mini).
Attach the resistors to the LEDs.
Tally LEDs are connected with the anodes to ground and the cathodes resistors to their GPIO pins.
Status LEDs are connected the other way around with the cathodes resistors connected to 3.3v and the anodes connected to GPIO pins.
A power LED can be attached with its anode to ground and the cathodes resistor to 3.3v.
Set PIN_PGM, PIN_PVW and/or PIN_CONN in arduino/user_config.h to the GPIO pin the LED is attached to.
To disable one or more, either remove the line or comment it out.
Battery level monitoring has not been fully developed yet.
@todo Not documented yet
@todo Not documented yet
@todo Not documented yet
When the hardware has been put together and the firmware has been configured, it is ready to be flashed.
- Open
arduino/arduino.inoin the Arduino IDE. - Configure the flashing tools under the
Toolsmenu soBoardmatches the ESP8266 development board (For Wemos D1 Mini, selectLOLIN(WEMOS) D1 R2 & Mini). - Connect in the ESP8266 development board to the computer with a USB cable.
- In the Arduino IDE, select the device to flash firmware to under the
Toolsmenu andPort. - Upload the sketch from the Arduino IDE to the device by pressing the
Uploadbutton.
If everything was set up correctly, the upload should successfully complete and the device should be ready to be configured.
@todo This section is incomplete
- done over http
- it creates a wireless ap at boot that is removed when successfully connected to atem
- can still configure over same network as atem is on
- has mdns service with device name
- wireless ap is enabled again after device reboots when updating settings
- wireless ap is not enabled again if connection is lost until device restarts (by design)
The proxy server is a piece of software that can run on MacOS, Windows or Linux and sits between the clients and the ATEM switcher to increse the maximum number of connected clients allowed at one time. An ATEM switcher can only handle a maximum of 5 to 8 concurrent connections depending on the model. This includes both software and hardware panels. For situations where that is not enough, the proxy server ups the number of connections available for clients only interested in camera control and/or tally to a theoretical maximum of 32768. Instead of the clients connecting directly to the ATEM switcher, they connect to it through the proxy server.
- make
- clang/gcc
Install from your package manager
- make
- clang/gcc
Everything can be installed with xcode-select --install.
- Open a terminal window
- Download this repository if not already done, either manually or from the command line
git clone https://github.com/FanatiQS/wireless_atem_camera_control.git- Navigate to
proxy_serverdirectory in the downloaded repository and run the build toolchain
cd wireless_atem_camera_control/proxy_server
make
cd build- Run it with
./serverfollowed by the IP address of the ATEM switcher delimited by a space. For example:
./server 192.168.1.240- nmake
- MSVC compiler
Both nmake and the MSVC compiler are installed with Visual Studio C++.
- Download and extract this repository if not already done
- Locate and run the
Developer Command Prompt for VS XXXXfile whereXXXXis the release year for the version of Visual Studio installed - Navigare to the
proxy_serverdirectory in the downloaded repository and run the build toolchain
cd wireless_atem_camera_control/proxy_server
nmake
cd build- Run it with
server.exefollowed by the IP address of the ATEM switcher delimited by a space. For example:
./server.exe 192.168.1.240Camera models and protocol versions that have been tested to work. If a camera model is not tested, it does not indicate it does not work, just that if it has some special features not available on other cameras, there is a small chance those features might no work correctly.
| Camera Model | Status |
|---|---|
| URSA Broadcast | Testing |
| URSA Mini Pro G2 | Testing |
| Micro Studio Camera | Untested |
| Pocket Cinema Camera 4k | Untested |
| Protocol version | ATEM firmware version | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2.30 | 8.1.1+ | Testing |
The testing suite is very incomplete so far. Whenever the ATEM firmware updates, there is a risk of something breaking since the protocol is proprietary. Using the test suite will find out if something in the ATEM protocol has changed.
A big thanks to Scenteknik AVL for sponsoring this project with components for a prototype.
This project does not have a license specified. Note that this does not make it open source or free to use. Feel free to test it out, but please get in touch before using it in a production environment as that is not permitted without a license. You can find my contact information in the contact section.
You can reach me at [email protected].