Parallel Camera

This guide will show you how to connect and use the VM-011-COL-M12 phyCAM-P module on the phyCORE-i.MX8X development kit.

Requirements

VM-011-COL-M12 phyCAM-P

Hardware Setup

With the board powered off, connect the phyCAM-P module to the camera connector (X33) on the carrier board.
Power on the development kit and stop in U-Boot.
Load the device tree overlay required for the parallel camera interface and then boot the board
Target (U-Boot)
```
setenv overlay_files phytec-imx8qxp-parallel-camera.dtbo
boot
```

Picture Time!

To capture a JPEG, use the following gstreamer pipeline.

Target (Linux)

gst-launch-1.0 v4l2src device=/dev/video0 num-buffers=1 ! 'video/x-bayer, format=grbg, width=2592, height=1944' ! bayer2rgb ! videoscale ! 'video/x-raw, width=259, height=518' ! jpegenc ! filesink location=snap.jpeg

Expected Output

Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Pipeline is live and does not need PREROLL ...
Setting pipeline to PLAYING ...
New clock: GstSystemClock
[  340.554739] bypass csc
[  340.557115] input fmt RGB4
[  340.559885] output fmt GRBG
Got EOS from element "pipeline0".
Execution ended after 0:00:02.391455375
Setting pipeline to PAUSED ...
Setting pipeline to READY ...
Setting pipeline to NULL ...
Freeing pipeline ...

Viewing the Image

There are a few options to view the image.

Capacitive Touch Display (LCD-018-070-KAP)
- Using the LCD you can display the image on the LCD using the built in weston software.
  
  Note
  
  Either tap the “X” on the LCD display picture window or press “ctrl+c” to return to normal console usage.
- Once the following command is run you should see your picture on the display.
  Target (Linux)
  weston-image snap.jpeg
Note

The ‘weston-image’ utility will display the image to the LVDS0 interface by default.

Local Network

If you do not have a display, you can use a local network and copy the file from the development kit to your host machine (Linux/Ubuntu).
Connect the development kit to your local network using eth0 or eth1.
Find the given ip address using “ifconfig” command.
Target (Ubuntu)
```
ifconfig
```

Expected Output

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 3e:c0:4b:d9:5e:fe
          inet addr:<your_ip_address>  Bcast:<your_bcast_address>  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::3cc0:4bff:fed9:5efe/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:6983 errors:0 dropped:1511 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:65 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:2283310 (2.1 MiB)  TX bytes:13190 (12.8 KiB)

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 22:20:a1:64:cf:ba
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:140 (140.0 B)  TX bytes:140 (140.0 B)

Use secure copy (scp) on your host machine (Ubuntu/Linux) to copy the file from the development kit to a local directory.

Host Machine Terminal

sudo scp root@<devkit_ip_address>:/home/root/snap.jpeg /home/user/Downloads/

Local Machine
- View the image from a local machine.
- Power off the kit and remove the SD card
- Plug the SD card into your host machine and copy the snap.jpeg image from the card to your local machine for viewing.

Make a Video

Note

Video stream capture is not yet supported in this BSP.

Fast enough conversion from the Bayer data output by the camera to RGB requires the use of the ISP (which is not yet supported).