equip-1

compact dv recorder. connects to any firewire camcorder and saves footage directly to microsd. no laptop required. you control it from an android app — live preview, one-tap record, and browse or download what you captured.

supports minidv, dvcam, dvcpro, digital8, and hdv. controls the tape deck on supported cameras, so you can digitize an entire tape automatically. pressing record on the camera triggers capture on the equip-1.

built around the radxa rock 2f and our custom firehat — a firewire hat with a via vt6315n controller connected over pcie via fpc. the firehat is also available standalone; it works as a hat for the rock 2f, pi 5 and other sbcs.

v0.1 — first tagged release. the device records, streams a live preview, and is fully controllable from the phone. see status for exactly what works today and what is still rough.

what it does

• capture dv/hdv over firewire straight to microsd, lossless .dv
• live preview on your phone — webrtc for low latency, mjpeg as a fallback
• start and stop recording remotely; auto-trigger from the camera's record button
• browse, download, share and delete recordings from the app
• pair over bluetooth, then reach the device three ways: over your wifi, over ethernet, or over the device's own wifi hotspot
• switch the device between hotspot and a wifi network from the app, no cable
• runs a mainline-kernel yocto image; the whole stack is open source

the app

android app built with react + capacitor. four screens: live viewfinder, files, setup, and pairing.

status

verified on a radxa rock 2f (rk3528a), mainline kernel 6.18, image built from the meta-firewire-recorder wrynose layer.

works today:

• dv capture to microsd, lossless .dv files
• live preview over webrtc/whep and over mjpeg
• remote record start/stop, with the record button disabled (and a reason shown) when a capture would just fail — device unreachable, no camera, or low space
• file listing with thumbnails, download, native share, and delete
• bluetooth pairing and device status over ble
• device wifi hotspot (wpa3), phone joins it as a saved network in one tap
• joining the device to a 2.4ghz wifi network, and switching hotspot ↔ wifi from the app without re-pairing
• lan auto-discovery seeded from the phone's own subnet

rough edges / not yet:

• 5ghz wifi as a client is not supported — the aic8800 radio's 5ghz association is rejected by the driver/firmware, so only 2.4ghz networks provision reliably. dual-band ssids that expose 5ghz will fail to join.
• bluetooth advertising uses a legacy fallback: the combo chip reports bluetooth 5.4 but its extended advertising doesn't transmit, so the app scans by device name (equip-1) rather than by service uuid. the real fix is a kernel quirk patch on the bsp side.
• hardware h.264 encoding isn't available on the rk3528 in mainline (no encoder driver), so the live preview is encoded in software (libx264). capture itself is lossless dv and unaffected.
• the live preview shows a picture only while the camcorder is actually transmitting dv frames (playing a tape or in camera mode). an idle deck shows a connected-but-waiting viewfinder.

downloads

• android app — grab the apk from the latest release and sideload it. android will warn about an unknown source; that's expected for a sideloaded build.
• prebuilt device image — a ready-to-flash yocto image is published on the meta-firewire-recorder releases. write it to a microsd card (e.g. with balenaetcher or dd) and boot the rock 2f from it.
• build from source — see building.

hardware

equip-1

• radxa rock 2f (rockchip rk3528a, quad-core arm cortex-a53, 2 gb ram, 8 gb emmc)
• firehat (see below)
• microsd storage
• usb-c power input, 5v
• hdmi output
• wifi 6, bluetooth 5.4 (aic8800d80, single shared radio)
• 2x usb 2.0 type-a
• 60 mm x 70 mm x 25 mm, ~100 g

firehat

• via vt6315n firewire controller
• 6-pin firewire port (dv in)
• pcie 2.0 x1 via fpc connector
• 40-pin 2.54 mm gpio header (raspberry pi-compatible)
• oled display
• 3x smd buttons, rgb led, buzzer
• 56 mm x 70 mm x 12 mm, ~25 g

how it fits together

firewire camcorder ──(dv over ieee-1394)──▶ firehat (vt6315n) ──pcie──▶ rock 2f
                                                                           │
   android app ◀──── http / webrtc / ble ────────────────────────────────┘
                     companion-api (:8000)  +  companion-net (ble/wifi)

• companion-api — http server on :8000. manages dvgrab/ffmpeg capture, the mediamtx lifecycle, the webrtc/mjpeg preview, file listing, and serves the web ui.
• companion-net — ble gatt server plus connman wifi/hotspot control. advertises the device for pairing and accepts wifi credentials.
• mediamtx — bundled rtsp/webrtc relay that re-publishes the capture as a whep endpoint for the app.

repositories

• this repo (g8row/equip-1) — firehat hardware, the companion app and server (companion/), and the os sources.
• g8row/meta-firewire-recorder — the yocto meta-layer that builds the device image.

layout:

equip-1/
  companion/        the recorder software
    server/         two go binaries (companion-api, companion-net)
    web/            react + capacitor app (android)
    deploy/         board deployment bits
  design/           firehat hardware + media
  src/os/           os sources

building

app + server (from companion/):

cd companion/web && npm install && npm run build   # web ui
cd ../server && GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 CGO_ENABLED=0 go build ./cmd/companion-api

the react ui is embedded into companion-api at build time. for the android app, npx cap sync android && ./gradlew assembleDebug from companion/web.

device image — see meta-firewire-recorder.

open source

hardware is licensed under cern-ohl-s. software is licensed under gpl. derivatives must be released under the same licenses.

community

discord: discord.gg/wpXmcb5mvK

if you like this project and want to know more about the development and future steps, or even build your own version, feel free to join. we are a small community building objects with computers.