Blackmagic Design Announces New Blackmagic 3G-SDI Arduino Shield at NAB 2016

Blackmagic Design has announced the new Blackmagic 3G-SDI Arduino Shield, which lets customers build their own custom controllers for cameras and other SDI devices. It allows broadcast engineers to integrate Blackmagic Design cameras into their own custom systems by using this new SDI expansion board. They will be demonstrating it at NAB 2016.

Arudino is a popular open-source electronics prototyping platform based on easy to use hardware and software. Similar to Raspberry Pi, which is more targeted at software engineers, Arduino is often the choice for hardware developers and is designed as a simpler, more flexible and lower cost way to build all kinds of custom projects.

Expansion boards are called “shields” in the Arduino world and Blackmagic Design decided to take advantage of this standardized expansion capability to build its Blackmagic 3D-SDI Arduino Shield interface card. Blackmagic Design has also written some sample code that shows how the Arduino communicates with the Blackmagic 3G-SDI Arduino Shield, and how the shield will then send the camera control commands to the camera.

The Blackmagic 3G-Arduino Shield is a simple expansion board or “shield” that includes 1 SDI input and 1 SDI output. The SDI input allows any video source to be connected, and the SDI output is connected to the camera and has camera control protocol commands embedded into it. The Blackmagic 3G-SDI Arduino Shield is very easy to use by a software developer, as they just look up the camera control commands they want to use in the instruction manual and then add them to the Arduino software code that sends them to the Blackmagic 3G-SDI Aurdino Shield to be inserted into the SDI link.

The Blackmagic SDI Control Protocol uses the blanking space in an SDI data stream to send commands for things such as camera and lens control, color correction, program return, tally, talkback, and more over SDI cables so customers don’t have to deploy additional, expensive equipment and run extra cables. The protocol is well documented and is now also being supported by third party manufacturers. The Blackmagic SDI Control Protocol is built into Blackmagic cameras, ATEM switchers, DeckLink cards, Video Assist, and viewfinder products.

The Blackmagic 3G-SDI Arduino Shield will be available mid year for US $95 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide. Blackmagic Design will be demonstrating the Blackmagic 3G-SDI Arduino Shield at booth SL217 at NAB 2016.