LukiLink project turns smartphones into an HDMI monitor

[OliKMIA]

Interesting product. Hopefully there won't be to much lag.

"It’s always baffled me as to why none of them have come out with a super lightweight, razor thin OLED display with HDMI input and built in battery that lasts as long as a smartphone."

Same here, I really don't understand why everything in photography and video is so behind in terms of size, specs, price and ergonomics most of the time. As if the so called "Pro" wanted something big and manly to make a point on the field.

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

If I understood right, the focus peaking on the app is still not developed?

[TARS]

I'd be curious to know if it overheats. Film Riot recently posted a video about the short they made using an iPhone and said they had issues with the phone frequently overheating. Depending on how taxing this is on the phone's processor, it could be an issue. Especially when recording to the device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhsg9KhGKQ

[Frank Glencairn]

If you guys have any questions, ask me anything. Since our Kickstarter launched, I got swamped, but I try to answer as quick as possible :-)

[Eno]

A very interesting product, thanks for sharing it!

[evgenymagata]

If the author of the article is in contact with the Person that started the kickstarter, i would strongly suggest to contact him and ask to correct his description. He is trying to sell an existing product as a novelty on kickstarter. That against kickstarters rules and has led to a suspension in the past with other projects. If the project was about a monitoring software (with lut support etc) geared  towards filmmakers - to use with existing HDMI to USB adapters, things would look different. But that's not what he is trying to sell. He pretends that he actually designed the device, which is not credible giving his resume as a DOP and drone operator with zero experience or education in electronics and software engineering. 

I am not to judge if this is a scam or just a failure to write a correct project description but as of now I would advise people not to put their money into this project.

Here is what I mean: http://m.pearl.de/item/4e58343339325f30?fref=gc

[JurijTurnsek]

Regarding battery life: check out the Moto Z phones with Moto Mods that you can replace on-the-fly (no need to restart the phone). They've got 5.5 screens too, so that's nice.

[Andrew Reid]

3 hours ago, evgenymagata said:

If the author of the article is in contact with the Person that started the kickstarter, i would strongly suggest to contact him and ask to correct his description. He is trying to sell an existing product as a novelty on kickstarter. That against kickstarters rules and has led to a suspension in the past with other projects. If the project was about a monitoring software (with lut support etc) geared  towards filmmakers - to use with existing HDMI to USB adapters, things would look different. But that's not what he is trying to sell. He pretends that he actually designed the device, which is not credible giving his resume as a DOP and drone operator with zero experience or education in electronics and software engineering. 

I am not to judge if this is a scam or just a failure to write a correct project description but as of now I would advise people not to put their money into this project.

Here is what I mean: http://m.pearl.de/item/4e58343339325f30?fref=gc

What about the app for it, isn't that an original creation?

[evgenymagata]

It COULD be, yes. We won't know until the software is ready. The "original" hardware is compatible with some capturing software, which will probably have a preview window. So unless his app can do anything beyond showing the image input on HDMI, there is nothing innovated.

Unfortunately he fails to advertise the project as such (a software project), giving the impression he designed a box that makes all this magic possible. Personally I think that is borderline scamming, but in any case it's against Kickstarterters rules. There are also several free tools to display the video from UVC compatible input devices on Android (i.e. easyCap) - probably that's where he has his idea (and maybe code) from.

[Frank Glencairn]

7 hours ago, evgenymagata said:

If the author of the article is in contact with the Person that started the kickstarter, i would strongly suggest to contact him and ask to correct his description. He is trying to sell an existing product as a novelty on kickstarter. That against kickstarters rules and has led to a suspension in the past with other projects. If the project was about a monitoring software (with lut support etc) geared  towards filmmakers - to use with existing HDMI to USB adapters, things would look different. But that's not what he is trying to sell. He pretends that he actually designed the device, which is not credible giving his resume as a DOP and drone operator with zero experience or education in electronics and software engineering. 

I am not to judge if this is a scam or just a failure to write a correct project description but as of now I would advise people not to put their money into this project.

Here is what I mean: http://m.pearl.de/item/4e58343339325f30?fref=gc

Well, actually that video grabber you mentioned in your link, was the thing that started the whole idea for us. We did our first tests, the videos, app prototyping andwhatnot with it. Though LukiLink will be manufactured by the same company (Hint: it's not Pearl, they just resell it), we have our own custom made board inside (without going to deep into this here, but it has a lot to do with latency/lag, and some other parameters, which don't really mater for a video grabber, but for the main usees our product), and  we also want to implement some features in the future, that would not be possible otherwise, like LUT upload to the device, an SDI option and some other stuff, which I can not talk about here, because of NDA. Also - if you look at the Kickstarter site - we have a female USB output connector implemented for us, not the fixed cable of the grabber. We made sure that both female connectors withstand the rough handling on set, and don't break as easy as the one of the video grabber (don't ask me how I know). That also makes a custom made housing necessary. Also we developed our own apps that will provide a ton of functions like peaking, waveform, markers etc. - also that grabber does only work with Android and not iOS. 

[Curtis Ross]

hmmm... now i have doubt.. I was excited...

[Saskamodie Jones]

Wait... did he record the video file to the phone's SD card or to the camera's SD card?

[Andrew Reid]

4 hours ago, Frank Glencairn said:

Well, actually that video grabber you mentioned in your link, was the thing that started the whole idea for us. We did our first tests, the videos, app prototyping andwhatnot with it. Though LukiLink will be manufactured by the same company (Hint: it's not Pearl, they just resell it), we have our own custom made board inside (without going to deep into this here, but it has a lot to do with latency/lag, and some other parameters, which don't really mater for a video grabber, but for the main usees our product), and  we also want to implement some features in the future, that would not be possible otherwise, like LUT upload to the device, an SDI option and some other stuff, which I can not talk about here, because of NDA. Also - if you look at the Kickstarter site - we have a female USB output connector implemented for us, not the fixed cable of the grabber. We made sure that both female connectors withstand the rough handling on set, and don't break as easy as the one of the video grabber (don't ask me how I know). That also makes a custom made housing necessary. Also we developed our own apps that will provide a ton of functions like peaking, waveform, markers etc. - also that grabber does only work with Android and not iOS. 

Sounds good to me.

Well explained!

[evgenymagata]

@Frank Glencairn you have a NDA with your own project? Never heard of that! Look, my problem is that I have serious doubts on you and the other guy being capable to engineer hardware and program a software to show hdmi input with focus peaking, lut etc.pp. yourself.

It's not a trivial task. Let's assume for the project crrdibilities sake you are not just relabeling an existing product but you are working with some Taiwanese manufacturer (i.e. Febon) and they agreed to modify their design to your specs as for the hardware and some people that are engineering the software... Why is it so hard to say so, I guess it will rather make people trust more in the project than if you and the other guy pretend to have done the engineering and programming on their own. And BTW since at that pricepoint the hardware company can not use fpga's, it's going to be an ASIC, how many HDMI to h264 Asics exist, it's not so hard to find out which one they could be using, also the tech specs of the ASIC will certainly specify the design inherent latency of the (h264) video encoding, which you fail to mention in the project description. This part is influencing the latency indepenfently of the phones speed and could already be specified.

And being a bit more specific about how you are going to solve iOS lack of UVC drivers would be interesting.

(see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32133699/is-it-possible-to-connect-external-wired-camera-to-ios-device)

[Frank Glencairn]

You really thought, we are sitting there with soldering irons? Of course not! We are Filmmakers, looking for a solution. As you say, it's not a trivial task. Of course we have guys helping us in any department. I have zero idea, how to code an app, cause I'm a DP, not a coder -  and of course we searched for a guy, who can do that for us, for example. Same goes with anything else - we have people helping us. How is that unusual? You think the CEO of DJI is developing the circuit boards for the next drohe himself? 

[Frank Glencairn]

12 hours ago, Saskamodie Jones said:

Wait... did he record the video file to the phone's SD card or to the camera's SD card?

the video file to the phone's SD card 

[no_connection]

What is the latency in ms for the different frame rates? Or expressed in frames if you want that.
 

What's with the sudden hate against using existing interface solutions? h264 encoding chips are not new and aught to be cheap at this point, same with the USB side.

And when it come so getting the data, you could just have ethernet as transport via USB, it's not like the 15Mbit stream is that high demand.

What would be interesting is if they made a host mode USB port where you could plug in a wifi adapter, just set it up through cable first then it would work as an access point. UDP multicast and you have a wireless monitor, or several depending how many phones you have. The app side would be fairly similar I think. Latency would not be much more than cable, maybe max 10ms and that is insignificant compared to other things.
You could add a wired ethernet adapter too which would be useful as you can add professional access point and have large area coverage.

I would not rely on recording through wifi tho.

[Andrew Reid]

It's pretty normal on KickStarter for people to contract out the engineering work to, erm, engineers! Digital Bolex did it.

evgenymagata's point here was that an off-the-shelf product is being relabelled and sold as original, which is simply not the case, as the circuit board, capabilities and app aren't the same and have been contracted out to engineers by the people with the ideas, which is exactly how KickStarter is supposed to work.

Even if I KickStarted my film, I would not do every single role myself and play 5 acting parts

Unless it was called The Room!

[silvertonesx24]

On 8/23/2017 at 8:50 AM, Tim Sewell said:

This is great and everything, but really only in an emergency. Most smartphones don't have removable batteries, so you're left with a choice of some kind of USB powerbank (adding weight/bulk) or running your phone down in the field - where you're most likely to need a cellphone.

USB power is readily available anywhere really. Quality smartphones are dirt cheap, you can buy a locked phone for this purpose and keep your cell phone free. I bought an S6 for no other purpose than using it with Gear VR and this looks like it'd be perfect for my rigs. Get into the settings to disable apps and put airplane mode on and you're going to have much better battery life than field monitors that eat batteries for breakfast.

[evgenymagata]

53 minutes ago, silvertonesx24 said:

USB power is readily available anywhere really. Quality smartphones are dirt cheap, you can buy a locked phone for this purpose and keep your cell phone free. I bought an S6 for no other purpose than using it with Gear VR and this looks like it'd be perfect for my rigs. Get into the settings to disable apps and put airplane mode on and you're going to have much better battery life than field monitors that eat batteries for breakfast.

But don't have a lag of 10 frames ... And something like the ikan dh5e is 300$ nowadays 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1190097-REG/ikan_dh5_5_full_hd.html