Be Here Turns PCs into Videoconferencing Stations with Blackfin®
According to an oft-quoted study by Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA Albert Mehrabian, there are three basic elements of face-to-face communication. Words account for 7 percent, vocal tone for 38 percent, and body language for 55 percent of a message. Successful communication requires all three elements to be congruent, otherwise an ambiguous message may be sent and/or received. The absence of visual cues in e-mail messages and telephone conversations places an undo burden on word choice and tonality to avoid misunderstandings, especially when complicated or emotional content is being conveyed.
While face-to-face meetings naturally provide all three modes of communication, geographical practicalities often preclude such meetings for routine business. That's exactly where the integrated video, audio, and data collaboration solution from Be Here Corporation becomes an essential business tool for multi-location meetings. Unlike the usual static conferencing scenarios, Be Here's technology, which comprises a tabletop conferencing appliance and client software that runs on individual PCs, empowers each and every user in a meeting to control their own 360° video views of participants at multiple sites and to share data at any moment.
To realize its product goals of delivering an entirely new caliber of user experience and an easy-to-use appliance for getting more done in business meetings, Be Here sought a low-cost, high-performance signal processor for full-motion video, audio, and data conferencing for its single streamlined device. Be Here chose a Blackfin® ADSP-BF561 processor from Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI). Said Ed Burfine, Be Here Corporation Chief Marketing Officer, "ADI not only offered a signal processor, but has a Software & Systems Technology (S&ST) division with in-depth knowledge of video, audio, and data conferencing that other vendors just don't have. We wanted a partner, not just a silicon component vendor. Blackfin is a very cost-competitive product. But more than Blackfin itself, the (S&ST) division* at ADI sold us with its expertise in video and Voice-over-IP (VoIP)."
Be Here Collaboration Phone Solution
Be Here's VoIP collaboration phone is poised to replace today's conventional speaker phone, combining an integrated 360° panoramic view camera that captures an entire room in full-motion video for multiple local and remote sites with audio conferencing and data sharing. The device integrates easily with existing IT, VoIP networking, and telephony environments, and works with legacy conferencing systems. It allows participants to customize and personalize what they see, hear and share in their meetings.
Behind the scenes, a high-performance Blackfin ADSP-BF561 processor handles video and audio compression tasks. One of the primary reasons the company was considering an ADI processor was to power the patented 360° optics and imaging capabilities that set the Be Here product apart from the competition. "Among our key product differentiators is the panoramic, ultra-wide view experience combined with exceptional image processing, image display, image navigation, and image distribution capabilities," said Burfine. "With a simple phone call, each participant instantaneously sees, hears, shares, captures and controls everything from their own point of view. Each can navigate, pan, tilt, and zoom in and out across full-motion video views of multiple locations from their own PC. The result is a new way for individuals to conduct their business interactions and to control their meeting outcomes. The combined technology literally arms them to see it all and to accomplish more in their business day, their way." Other collaboration solutions provide narrow, static, and lower quality video images.
"The breadth of the ADI product line was another reason we chose Blackfin," said Burfine. "First, we're getting a whole lot of MIPS at a low cost. Plus, the price and performance range of the Blackfin family means that we can select a value point that not only matches our current needs, but also the increasing lifecycle requirements of our product roadmap and the realities of an evolving market demand for larger images with maximum clarity and better overall quality."
The Blackfin ADSP-BF561 processor is a high-performance member of the Blackfin family specifically designed for multimedia and telecommunications applications. At the heart of the device are two independent 600 MHz Blackfin processors. These processors combine a dual-MAC state-of-the-art signal processing engine, a RISC-like microprocessor instruction set and single instruction, and multiple data (SIMD) multimedia capabilities in a single instruction set architecture. The ADSP-BF561 processor also has 328K bytes of on-chip memory and integrates a general-purpose set of peripherals.
The compact Be Here device, which sits on a conference room table, uses a Power-over-Ethernet (POE) connection, in lieu of separate power and Ethernet connections, for ease of use and to save conference room table space. Blackfin's power management attributes became very useful. In order to conform to the POE specification, only 13 Watts of power could be dissipated. "Another reason we went with Blackfin is that the processor allowed us to control the power," said Giorgio Propersi, Be Here Vice President of Engineering. Blackfin processors provide world-class power management and performance for embedded signal processing applications. The processors are designed in a low power and low voltage design methodology and feature Dynamic Power Management, which is the ability to vary both the voltage and frequency of operation. That translates into an exponential reduction in power dissipation.
Systems and Software Expertise
ADI has proven systems and software expertise from having built videophones and conferencing solutions for other leading industry products. "ADI has the knowledge of the protocols, standards, software stacks and experience that enabled them to quickly understand our differentiating technology and how it will perform within the enterprise network ecosystem," said Propersi. "ADI knows what it takes to work with the special requirements of already-installed legacy systems, and has the vision to keep up with the current standards."
Be Here utilized ADI's Panview videophone A/V communications reference design, a hardware solution for building feature-rich, high-performance, low-cost videophones. The videophone reference design kit (RDK), which serves as the development platform, includes videophone development boards, complete system software, and full documentation. It also includes remote software update support that allows updating of the software on the board remotely via a standard PC. A complete suite of software is also available for videophone applications, which is controlled by a comprehensive set of application program interfaces (APIs) that enable customers such as Be Here to tailor their solutions.
Two software applications utilized by Be Here are: the IP-based control protocol H.323, which is the interoperability standard for audio, video, and data transmissions, and Internet phone and VoIP; and the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, and instant messaging. Be Here asked ADI to port the H.263 and H.264 video compression codecs to Blackfin. Audio algorithms ported were G.7.11, G.723 and G.729. (See the sidebar for a description of video/audio codecs.)
"We're using ADI's H.323 protocol stack, which complies with the full motion video, audio, and data conferencing standard," said Propersi. "It's how we set up our calls. ADI's S&ST division ported the stack to the Blackfin processor and added all of the video compression standards and audio algorithms we needed."
At the heart of the Panview reference design solution is the Blackfin processor. Blackfin includes an enhanced instruction set that supports multimedia audio and video functionality, and an architecture that is optimized to perform equally well on both control and numeric algorithms. Blackfin's video capabilities include support for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard H.263 and H.264 video codecs, high-resolution graphics with overlay, alpha keying, chroma keying, and antiflicker filtering.
On the input, Blackfin's chipset includes an integrated glueless interface to standard NTSC/PAL analog composite cameras and CCIR656 compatible CMOS sensors. On the output, the chipset enables direct connection to a standard NTSC/PAL TV or a VGA LCD panel. For audio, the Panview reference design supports ITU standard compliant G.711, G.722, G.722.1, and G.723.1 and G.729AB audio codecs.
Cost Savings
The Blackfin processor proved cost-effective for Be Here in a number of ways. As previously discussed, the support the company received from ADI's S&ST group proved invaluable for cost savings not only from a pure time-to-market standpoint, but also from the efficiencies associated with the design and engineering synergies of both teams. But there's more. "The integration level of the Blackfin processor itself was very cost-effective," said Propersi. The Blackfin ADSP-BF561 processor integrates a general-purpose set peripherals, which include two parallel input/output peripheral interface (PPI) units that support ITU-R 656 video and a glueless interface to analog front-end ADCs; two dual-channel, full duplex synchronous serial ports supporting eight stereo I2S channels; dual 16-channel DMA controllers and one internal memory DMA controller; 12 general-purpose 32-bit timer/counters with PWM capability; an SPI-compatible port; an UART with support for IrDA®; dual watchdog timers; 48 programmable flags; and an on-chip phase-locked loop cable of 1 x to 63 x frequency multiplication.
The wealth of I/O makes interfacing with peripheral devices, like codecs and Be Here's FPGA, achievable without the B.O.M. or real estate expense of glue logic. In this case, the main application transfers several hundred million bytes-per-second of video and audio data between the Blackfin processor and the FPGA over the processor's PPI, with DMA making the block transfers (between internal L1/L2 memories and FPGA memory space) a background task.
Camera data, captured via Be Here FPGA implementation, gets transferred in real time to the Blackfin processor where video compression occurs. The resulting compressed data is sent back to the FPGA where it is packetized for IP transmission. Likewise, packetized network data that is received by the FPGA is unpacked, DMA-shipped over the PPI to the Blackfin processor for decompression, and DMA-returned to the FPGA for video display.
"The memory controller is an aspect of Blackfin that we really liked for our system's FPGA/coprocessor architecture," said Propersi. "Not only was system performance enabled by the DMA and I/O, but the minimal pin-count requirements helped lower the cost and design complexity of our own FPGA."
Be Here's future roadmap includes ADI processors. Said Burfine, "Everyone in the enterprise, from individual contributors to the CEO, knows that cross-location meetings are painful and cumbersome to participate in due to the poor communications tools at their disposal. With Be Here's appliance, we believe we have the productivity and collaboration tool that totally changes how we meet. Now each person in the meeting can see, hear, share, capture and control what is important to them.
"And since it's a VoIP device, the enterprise can further leverage its extensive investment for even better ROI. We have always viewed our price point as critical to our success, and with ADI's Blackfin family we are further building-out an affordable VoIP collaboration phone family and a range of other industry applications." Burfine concluded, "When delivering a consistent and reliable rich media experience that business users must have to succeed, we have the confidence that ADI's S&ST group understands the future and will be a force to help drive the market in our delivery of VoIP-enabled devices that put users in control of their multi-location meetings."
For more information, please visit the company's website, Bere Here Corporation.