Jetson Nano - Developing a Pi v1.3 camera driver Part 2

I liked to thank motiveorder.com for sponsoring the hardware and development time for this article. 

Following on from my previous post, finally I am in a position to release a alpha version of the driver unfortunately at this stage only in binary form. Development of the driver has been complicated by the fact that determining the correct settings for the OV5647 is extremely time consuming giving the lack of good documentation.

The driver supports the following resolutions

2592 x 1944 @15 fps
1920 x 1080 @30 fps
1280 x 960  @45 fps
1280 x 720  @60 fps

I have added support for 720p because most of the clone camera seem to be targeting 1080p or 720p based on the lens configuration. I mainly tested with an original RPI V1.3 camera to ensure backward compatibility.

The driver is pre-compiled with the latest L4T R32.2 release so there is a requirement to deploy a kernel plus modules and with a new dtb file. Therefore I recommend you do some background reading to understand the process before deploying. Furthermore I recommend you have access to the linux console via the UART interface if the new kernel fails to boot or the camera is not recognised.

Deployment of the kernel and modules will be done on the Nano itself while flashing of the dtb file has to be done from a Linux machine where the SDK Manager is installed.

Download nano_ov5647.tar.gz and extract to your nano :

mkdir ov5647
cd ov5647
wget  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qA_HwiLXIAHbQN-TTEU1daEIW9z7R2vy

tar -xvf ../nano_ov5647.tar.gz

After extraction you will see the following files:

-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 291462110 Aug 26 17:23 modules_4_9_140.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group 200225    Aug 26 17:26 tegra210-p3448-0000-p3449-0000-a02.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 user group  34443272 Aug 26 17:26 Image-ov5647

Copy kernel to /boot directory :

sudo cp  Image-ov5647 /boot/Image-ov5647

Change boot configuration file to load our kernel by editing /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf. Comment out the following line and added the new kernel, so the change is from this:

      LINUX /boot/Image

to

       #LINUX /boot/Image
       LINUX /boot/Image-ov5647


Next step is to extract the kernel modules:

cd /lib/modules/
sudo tar -xvf <path to where files were extracted>/modules_4_9_140.tar.gz


The last step is to flash the dtb file, tegra210-p3448-0000-p3449-0000-a02.dtb.  As discussed in the comments section (below) by jiangwei it is possible to copy the dtb file directly to Nano refer to this link on how this can be achieved. See section  "Flash custom DTB on the Jetson Nano"

Alternatively you can use SDK manager,  flashing require copying the dtb file to the linux host machine into the directory Linux_for_Tegra/kernel/dtb/  where SDK your installed. Further instructions on how to flash the dtb are covered in a post I made here however since we don't want to replace the kernel the command to use is:

sudo ./flash.sh --no-systemimg -r -k DTB jetson-nano-qspi-sd mmcblk0p1

There seems to be some confusion about how to put the nano into recovery mode. The steps to do that are:

1. Power down nano
2. J40 - Connect recovery pins 3-4 together
3. Power up nano
4. J40 - Disconnect pins 3-4
5. Flash file

After flashing the dtb the nano should boot the new kernel and hopefully the desktop will reappear. To verify the new kernel we can run the following command:

uname -a

It should report the kernel version as 4.19.10+ :

Linux jetson-desktop 4.9.140+

If successful power down the Nano and now you can connect your camera to FPC connector J13. Power up the nano and once desktop reappears verify the camera is detected by:

dmesg | grep ov5647

It should report the following:

[    3.584908] ov5647 6-0036: tegracam sensor driver:ov5647_v2.0.6
[    3.603566] ov5647 6-0036: Found ov5647 with model id:5647 process:11 version:1
[    5.701298] vi 54080000.vi: subdev ov5647 6-0036 bound


The above indicates the camera was detected and initialised. Finally we can try streaming, commands for different the resolutions are below:

#2592x1944@15fps
gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM),width=2592, height=1944, framerate=15/1' ! nvvidconv flip-method=0 ! 'video/x-raw,width=2592, height=1944' ! nvvidconv ! nvegltransform ! nveglglessink -e

#1920x1080@30fps
gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM),width=1920, height=1080, framerate=30/1' ! nvvidconv flip-method=0 ! 'video/x-raw,width=1920, height=1080' ! nvvidconv ! nvegltransform ! nveglglessink -e

#1280x960@45fps
gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM),width=1280, height=960, framerate=45/1' ! nvvidconv flip-method=0 ! 'video/x-raw,width=1280, height=960' ! nvvidconv ! nvegltransform ! nveglglessink -e

#1280x720@60fps
gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM),width=1280, height=720, framerate=60/1' ! nvvidconv flip-method=0 ! 'video/x-raw,width=1280, height=720' ! nvvidconv ! nvegltransform ! nveglglessink -e

The driver supports controlling of the analogue gain which has a range of 16 to 128. This can be set using the 'gainrange' property, example below:

gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc gainrange="16 16" ! 'video/x-raw(memory:NVMM),width=1280, height=720, framerate=60/1' ! nvvidconv flip-method=0 ! 'video/x-raw,width=1280, height=720' ! nvvidconv ! nvegltransform ! nveglglessink -e

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