Hacking Suggestion Emulating the nintendo switch dock for easy video capture?

[dj505]

Take the following with a fairly large grain of salt, I only know a bit about how this stuff works lol.

The Switch's video signal is encrypted iirc, so there would need to be a decryption solution for that. Once the signal is decrypted, you could theoretically make the Switch think it's plugged into a dock and send the video signal to a PC through USB, making it act like that's the screen instead of a TV. So you'd have the USB C cable plugged into the Switch, that plugged into some sort of device that decrypts the signal, then that sends the signal to a PC via USB like how 3DS capture cards work using a special program to display the image on the PC. You wouldn't be able to see the image on the Switch itself, but you could capture video using OBS or something.

Again, this is all speculation, although it would be neat if it could work.

 

[Admiral124]

The Type-C connection on the bottom outputs a Display Port signal which is converted to HDMI via the STDP2550 MyDP to HDMI chip in the dock. The best option at the moment is running through a capture device while in docked mode.

 

[NitroCipher]

It would be interesting to see, but I highly doubt this will be possible. It would be great for livestreaming if possible.

 

[linkinworm]

It is possible to write a driver etc to do this, there have been basic usb video interfaces with software based solutions before, a usb 3.0 port might be able to do this, usb 2.0 is too slow even for hardware based solutions for real time, but part of the issues you'd expect would be display delays and possible overall bad experience. this would require a fair bit of work, the driver would likely need to switch the switch into TV mode, and then the software side would need to flip a few things to emulate the hdmi usb side of things

 

[59672]

It is possible to write a driver etc to do this, there have been basic usb video interfaces with software based solutions before, a usb 3.0 port might be able to do this, usb 2.0 is too slow even for hardware based solutions for real time, but part of the issues you'd expect would be display delays and possible overall bad experience. this would require a fair bit of work, the driver would likely need to switch the switch into TV mode, and then the software side would need to flip a few things to emulate the hdmi usb side of things

Writing a driver to encode video to pipe over usb is significantly different than splitting and demuxing the video, audio and usb signals from a nintendo switch. This is done with a dedicated chip, typical usb controllers would not be able to accomplish such nor are they designed to, read the vesa whitepapers if you want to understand this more. It isn't simply encoding the data over a usb connection but repurposing some of the pins to transfer the DP video and audio signals. Not to mention the higher voltage the switch would want over what the type-c port of consumer host devices put out.
This is something that would require re-encoding the video to transfer to the PC no matter what, whether using dedicated hardware or a hack on the switch's end to encode the data over pins set for actual usb data. For the time being it's simply easiest to use any sort of hdmi capture device.

 

[linkinworm]

Writing a driver to encode video to pipe over usb is significantly different than splitting and demuxing the video, audio and usb signals from a nintendo switch. This is done with a dedicated chip, typical usb controllers would not be able to accomplish such nor are they designed to, read the vesa whitepapers if you want to understand this more. It isn't simply encoding the data over a usb connection but repurposing some of the pins to transfer the DP video and audio signals. Not to mention the higher voltage the switch would want over what the type-c port of consumer host devices put out.
This is something that would require re-encoding the video to transfer to the PC no matter what, whether using dedicated hardware or a hack on the switch's end to encode the data over pins set for actual usb data. For the time being it's simply easiest to use any sort of hdmi capture device.

Never said it was a good idea, just that it is possible, regarding voltages etc, some motherboards like mine have a high voltage / amp feature over one of the usb ports that could be used for that. you'd likely need a fairly competent pc to even use such a feature since it would require something along the lines of an emulator with a high level of hardware > software translation not just "here's some video play it" its a huge topic we could get into, but I don't really want to be writing a dissertation on the forum

 

[Alkéryn]

It is possible but only with homebrew and a double connector cable (Y cable i believe) to power the switch

 

[themperror]

an "easy" way of doing it would buy a HDMI splitter and and recorder, put the switch into the hdmi splitter, one goes to the recorder, the other to the TV, that way you can record while playing with nearly no input lagg.

 

[DeltaTGT]

This would be very interesting to see indeed

 

[Deleted User]

Elgato hdmi should work shouldn't it? It goes on the end of HDMI to tv, and another hdmi goes from the elgato to the tv.

It does. I use mine all the time.