Snazzy video overlay/OSD

[strantor]

Before you say it, I know about MAX7456. It's not "snazzy." I want something that IS.

If you don't know what MAX7456 is, it's the chip responsible for this text/graphical overlay commonly used for drone FPV:

See, not snazzy. It is very simple though, which is awesome. It has analog video in, analog video out, and SPI, so Arduino can tell it which characters to display. It can only display characters; 16 Rows x 30 Characters (12x18 pixel), and its library is limited to 256 characters.

I want to do something a little more involved... lines, colors, colored lines, etc. Maybe even CURVED colored lines if I may be so bold. Something like this :

See the dynamically changing lines? See the snazzy buttons? I could do lines with the MAX7456, but just static ones. I want to have lines that can cross each other, move around the screen, change angles, lengths, etc.; change dynamically.

Basically I want to be able to do whatever can be done with arduino's LCD library, but instead of displaying it on a LCD, displaying it as an overlay on an analog (or digital*) video feed. My research has led me to almost conclude that this tiny improvement in functionality will require an enormous leap in technology, cost, complexity, etc. But I'm not ready to accept that just yet. Because I keep thinking that, if instead of 16×30 characters 12×18 pixels in size, they would allow me 320×288 characters, 1x1 pixels in size, i would be 98% "there." Thought I'd ask here before throwing in the towel.

*The camera in question is a Flir Tau2 thermal camera. It has 3 options for video signal: PAL/NTSC, LVDS, and CMOS. I would rather stick with the PAL/NTSC as I'm not that smart and it's the only one of the 3 that I think I understand. But if you know of something that would work for me and uses one of these other two options, please do speak up.

Is there a shield or dev board or IC that I could design one around, that would work for me? There's one more "requirement" (strong desire): small form factor, like similar size to Arduino Nano or slightly larger.

[Railroader]

While waiting for tips, keep on researching. You already know more than many helpers I dare to say.
I suppose there are people working with stuff like this. Find them!

[strantor]

You couldn't have known how relevant this comment was when you posted it. After 4 days of heated searching I just found exactly what I was looking for within minutes of posting this.

FrSky PixelOSD Arduino library - RC Groups

It's not color, but I can live with that. The pixel-by-pixel capability is vastly more important to me.

I'm not going to close the thread though, maybe success comes in "3s"? Maybe someone knows of an equally simple color equivalent? Maybe one with better resolution?

[Railroader]

@strantor

You couldn't have known

Haha. You don't know... I'm joking but working as medium I get tips about things I don't know at all.......Quite often they show up being useful...

Being serious, I once worked in a comparable project more than 30 years ago. I understand Your interest but I have no useful tips.
Interesting project. Watch out for the need of processor capacity as well as memory requirements.

[strantor]

Well no luck actually findng the thing in stock anywhere. "Chip shortage" nonsense I suspect. Found a few websites offering it for sale but anymore I don't trust a website storefront that doesn't provide a numerical value for stock level ("37 in stock"). Been burned too many times. You order something that they make to look like they have it, it never ships, follow up a week later to find it's backordered until august 37th.

Now I'm looking into doing what I want inside the RTD2660 LCD driver that's already installed on the LCD driver board of the screen I'm using. The OSD capabilities of that IC are SUPER snazzy.

and meddling with the driver would open up doors to other cool stuff I'd like to do. I have no idea how feasible this is, seems definitely possible, and that's good enough to keep me occupied for a while.