Sebastian Tomczak has been playing around with controlling VGA output from an Arduino. Using Max/MSP to process audio and send data to the Arduino and a standard VGA output to send sync data to the monitor, he’s been able to put together some cool video effects.

In these examples, i am simply using three pins to control the RGB lines. However, the Arduino is not generating horizontal or vertical sync – this is generated by a computer.

You can grab the Max patch and Arduino code from Sebastian’s post. I dig the effect – it reminds me of the cool C4 demos kids used to make.

Hacking VGA lines with Arduino