IMX CSI

VAR-SOM-MX7 - Camera

Testing our MIPI cameras

Before you start any of below pipeline make sure you have camera connected. IMX family of processor uses gstreamer as multimedia framework. Please refer to https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/

Camera Probe

Run below command to see if you have got the camera detected

# v4l2-ctl --list-devices

This should output below

i.MX6S_CSI (platform:30710000.csi):
        /dev/video1

pxp (pxp_v4l2_out):
        /dev/video0

As you can see above i.MX6S_CSI (platform:30710000.csi): is camera and pxp (pxp_v4l2_out): pixel procesing engine for overlay on display

How to check whether I have the right camera stack / gstreamer plugin installed on my filesystem ?

Checking whether you have got the imx platform plugins installed on your filesystem: Run below command to check whether you have the IMX platform specific gstreamer plugin installed or not.

# gst-inspect-1.0  | grep "imx"
imxpxp:  imxpxpvideotransform: Freescale PxP video transform
imxpxp:  imxpxpvideosink: Freescale PxP video sink
imxv4l2videosrc:  imxv4l2videosrc: V4L2 CSI Video Source
imxaudio:  imxmp3audioenc: Freescale i.MX MP3 encoder
imxaudio:  imxuniaudiodec: Freescale i.MX uniaudio decoder

• imxv4l2videosrc: is the IMX family CSI camera v4l2 community plugin. Currently devkits only supports OV5640 as YUV input.

where sensor process incoming light and converts it to YUV 4:2:2 format data. MIPI data is captured by the MIPI CSI input of the devkit. Bayer processing not supported.

Testing Camera Loopback / Camera Preview on Display

The below pipelines are suitable for the fslc based Yocto releases for the VAR-SOM-MX7 (Yocto Morty and newer).

• For 640x480@30fps:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=0 ! imxpxpvideosink

• For 720x480@30fps:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=1 ! imxpxpvideosink

• For 1280x720@30fps :

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=2 ! imxpxpvideosink

• For 1920x1080@30fps:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=3 ! imxpxpvideosink

• For 2592x1944@15fps:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=4 ! imxpxpvideosink

Testing Camera JPEG Snapshot / Taking Single Picture

To Capture JPEG snapshot run any of below pipeline depending upon the resolution you want to take picture.

• For 640x480:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=0 num-buffers=1 ! jpegenc ! filesink location=/tmp/test.jpg

• For 720x480:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=1 num-buffers=1 ! jpegenc ! filesink location=/tmp/test.jpg

• For 1280x720:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=2 num-buffers=1 ! jpegenc ! filesink location=/tmp/test.jpg

• For 1920x1080:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=3 num-buffers=1 ! jpegenc ! filesink location=/tmp/test.jpg

• For 2592x1944:

# gst-launch-1.0 imxv4l2videosrc device=/dev/video1  imx-capture-mode=4 num-buffers=1 ! jpegenc ! filesink location=/tmp/test.jpg

Note:
The jpegenc gstreamer element is an open-source software jpeg encoder.
It encodes the images using the CPU, without utilizing the JPEG hardware acceleration.

References

You can find more examples in the GStreamer section.

Please note: IMX7 has different multimedia capabilities than IMX6. All the references mentioned above for GStreamer section should only be considered as examples. The pipelines may not work on IMX7 software stack.

For detailed camera training for IMX family refer to : http://cache.freescale.com/files/training/doc/ftf/2014/FTF-CON-F0119.pdf