Week Three

Friday, April 19, 2014

11:07 AM

Zigbee HDMI uses 2.4 GHz, as well as the transmitter and receiver we purchased from eBay as an example

Zigbee-250kbps
Bluetooth-2.1 Mbps

Dr. Taskin showed us how to use Google and Wikipedia for technical research on bandwidth and data rates of HDMI as well as the potential transmitters and receivers we are considering using.  We couldn't find data rates for HDMI so Dr. Taskin suggested suggested the data rates for a similar technology—DVI. To help ingrain exactly how to do this kind of technical research Dr. Tasking demonstrated comparing the rates that Bluetooth and HDMI transfer data.

DVI—4.9 Gbps
HDMI 1080p—1.485 Gbps
HDMI 720p—742.5Mbps
HMDI 480p—270 Mbps

We need to use a type A HDMI connector which is the standard HDMI cable in the industry
HDMI Bandwidth-4.95 Gbps for 1.0 and 10.2 Gbps for 1.3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Specifications

The problem that arose while doing research was that the technology we were planning  on using, which is Zigbee, only used 250 kBps, when HDMI required 1.485 Gbs, the equivalent of 1,567,621.1 kbps. In addition, the Bluetooth wireless technology only covers 2.1 Mbps, whereas the bandwidth for HDMI is 1,530 Mbps. Even if we wanted to use a lower resolution, such as 720p or 480p, there isn't enough bandwidth "space" in either Zigbee or Bluetooth, so we have to find a more capable wireless technology that can support HDMI bandwidth.

Professor Taskin suggested investigating some of the pre-existing wireless HDMI technologies out there and finding out what those companies used for handling the large bandwidth required by HDMI, and after doing some research, the most promising alternative was actually Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11ac), which can transfer a maximum of 6.93 Gbit/s per band. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB

 

This greatly differs from the other suggested wireless options, which are Wireless USB (53-48 Mbps), Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b (450 Mbps), and Bluetooth 4.0 (24 Mbps).  

ZIGBEE
https://docs.zigbee.org/zigbee-docs/dcn/09/docs-09-5131-00-0mwg-zigbee-rf4ce-standard-the-remote-control-standard-for-consumer-electronics.pdf

http://www.zigbee.org/Specifications/ZigBeeRF4CE/Overview.aspx

http://www.commercialintegrator.com/article/when_to_use_zigbee_z-wave

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Week Two

Friday, April 19, 2014

11:09 AM

This week we met with Dr. Taskin and discussed exactly how to go about accomplishing our goal for this project. After conducting research as a group is was discovered that a model of what we are trying to make already exists. There are a few videos on Youtube.com that have the developers as well as consumers discussing the product, its flaws, advantages and prices. The video  embedded below is a review describing a wireless HDMI component that was developed by IO Gear. One of the goals we have for this project is to build off the existing technology and improve it.

As stated in this video the quality of the video diminishes as distance is increased, a predictable problem for a wireless device. To attempt to solve this problem we can experiment and research the effect of using different transmission frequencies from transmitter to receiver.

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Week One

Friday, April 12, 2014

11:04 AM

This week our group went online and researched different A/V transceivers we could purchase to use the wireless technology for in our project.  After looking at several different websites, including Amazon, TigerDirect, and NewEgg, we finally found a transmitter and receiver set on eBay that we could purchase and take apart when it arrived to examine how it worked and determine if it would be helpful to take apart and use the wireless technology in it to make our own wireless HDMI transmitter and receiver.  Below are images of each:

On the right is the receiver and on the left is the transmitter we are going to take apart and examine, as well as potentially use bits and pieces of—particularly the wireless technology.  For our project however, we do not plan on using antennae as of yet.

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