[gstreamer] Create a gstreamer plugin for Lenkeng HDMI over IP extender

[mithro]

Brief explanation

Create a gstreamer plugin for sending and receiving from Lenkeng LKV373 (and compatible) devices.

You'll need to get a Lenkeng LKV373 as part of this project!

Expected results

• Two gstreamer plugins;
  • lkv373-sink -- Sends data from gstreamer to the output part of the device.
  • lkv373-src -- Receives data from the device and sends into gstreamer.
• Documentation on using the two gstreamer plugins
• Technical documentation of LKV373 protocol

Detailed explanation

FIXME: Add more information here.

You may need to get out a soldering iron so you can access the serial port on the device.

Detailed Explanation

There's a HDMI extender device, Lenkeng LKV373, which captures HDMI, and transcodes the video into MJPEG and outputs the stream over multicast UDP.

They're designed to run as a pair of sender + receiver, but someone has reverse engineered the wire protocol, and written some notes on reverse engineering the units:

http://danman.eu/blog/?p=110

Further reading

• https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB/wiki/Alternatives#wiki-ethernet-capture-devices
• Example code -- Python
• Example code -- Mixer GUI
• GStreamer Plugin Writer's Guide
• DVSwitch gstreamer plugin -- Simple example plugin.

Knowledge Prerequisites

• Strong coding skills. (C experience preferred!)
• (Good to have) Some multimedia coding experience.
• (Good to have) gstreamer coding experience.
• (Good to have) JPEG / MJPEG understanding.
• (Good to have) Wireshark / Reverse engineering experience.

Contacts

• Potential Mentors: @mithro @micolous @thaytan
• Mailing list: [email protected]
• gstreamer mailing list:

[ElTentakel]

Very interesting for me. I thought about a patch for the udp src/sink.

[kripton]

Hi, I'm also very interested in this work package. I don't have the hardware here yet but it's on order. To avoid duplicate work: Has there been any work done yet (except for the proof-of-concept python code)?

[mithro]

@kripton Great to hear that you're interested in doing this! I personally don't know of any progress on this, but you should do some searching to see.

I'd also recommend joining us on IRC @ irc://irc.freenode.net/#timvideos. We have a couple of gstreamer developers hanging out on our channel that could probably give you some advice. The #gstreamer IRC channel on freenode is also probably going to be a great source of information.

BTW Where did you purchase your device from?

[kripton]

Hey, just a short update. My TX/RX pair was delivered today. The RX seems to be broken (doesn't detect the Ethernet link) but the TX seems to work (hard to test when the counterpart is software only). At least I'm able to get the stream working. Furthermore, I once got an image displayed but had to leave then. More updates heopfully in the days ahead.

[mithro]

@acooks and @leesdolphin - Take a look at the work here.

[futaris]

A newer version (LK373A) which uses h.264 came out in 2017:

https://blog.danman.eu/new-version-of-lenkeng-hdmi-over-ip-extender-lkv373a/