NASA Hyperwall

[DanHouldsworth]

Having just read an article about NASA's hyperwall on the same day I received shipping confirmation for my cluster of 4 Parallella boards, it's got me thinking about whether this would be an interesting project.

1080p displays are reasonably affordable these days, so a 2x2 grid on the wall - each powered by a one of the Parallella cluster - would be within the realms of a DIY project. And would be a fantastic way to view the output of various other scientific computing projects.

My immediate questions would be the HDMI capabilities given the lack of a GPU. For this to be effective we'd want a frame rate of >50Hz.

If however this is a stumbling block, perhaps each Parallella output stream could feed a RasperryPi which does have a reasonably good GPU.

That would actually make a nice PR demonstration of linking two of the most exiting community projects in computing together, for an affordable DIY Hyperwall. Throw in an Arduino powered remote control and we'd have the hatrick....

[stealthpaladin]

Hi, I believe that the parallella is able to effectively turn the FPGA into a graphics card with plenty of power to handle HDMI. Someone correct me if I'm wrong please but I believe I have read that about the spec.

[9600]

[DanHouldsworth]

Thanks Both,

What would the most appropriate way of outputting 50Hz 1080p? Could it be streamed to RaspberryPi

A large subset of scientific projects are going to require real time computing, and so presumably real time output. And a good subset of that is likely to require visual display so I imagine there's a few addressing this need?

Cheers,

[9600]

[DanHouldsworth]

Thanks Andrew - that does indeed look ideally suited the Hyperwall project!