Video Home Storage

Hacker grade magnetic tape backup

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Inspiration

Tape backup is the best solution for companies to store large amounts of data. This market has a very high cost of entry for consumers. We want to create a solution that will allow anyone to use tape backup. Our solution is the Video Home Storage.

What it does

The Video Home Storage is a home tape backup solution. You can store files to and read file from the magnetic tape drive. Your magnetic tapes are VHS cassettes and your drive is a VCR.

How we built it

We used a VCR, TV tuner, Arduino, computer, and some software to transform the VCR. The TV tuner read the output of the VCR. The Arduino was used to control the play, stop, records, and eject buttons. The computer encoded files in to a video format and output them to the VCR. The VCR would finally record it to the VHS inside.

Challenges we ran into

Communication, Correcting video channels, Making the circuits for the VCR controller, Threading , TV tuner card

Accomplishments that we are proud of

Control VCR with our computer, Record video from a computer to a VCR, Record video from a VCR to a computer, Turn data into images, Turn images into data

What we learned

Analog Coax standards, Manipulating Arduino registers, Range of carrier frequency, Rotate right equals in C#, Scaling for NTSC color, Serial communication with Arduino, Serial out with C#

What's next for Video Home Storage

We currently have a working prototype of the system, but there is a multiple features we would like to add. We have a theoretical max yield of 2Gb per VHS cassette. We would like to attempt to reach a close data yield. We realized that we could record over a VHS with a movie on it. We would like to embed our data stream into a full movie. This would allow you to watch the movie on the tape and store the file. This would make it very hard for someone to detect the data stream without knowing of it.

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