Does Jetson Nano support RPI global shutter camera out of the box?

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Nano
1

I know the Jetson Nano supports the Raspberry Pi camera “version 2” out of the box.

But I wonder does Jetson support the latest raspberry pi global shutter camera, too?

This camera’s sensor is the Sony IMX296, which is different from the RPI camera 2.

I wonder does the driver for the IMX296 come out of the box with the latest Nvidia official kernel?

The Jetson Nano plus the RPI global shutter camera costs upwards of NTD$10,000 in total, I want to make sure that I really can get them working before I spend such a big sum of money.

1 Like
2

Hi @awawfumin

I looked into the kernel sources for the Jetson Nano for the JetPack 4.6.3, Linux For Tegra (L4T) 32.7.3, which is the latest JetPack and L4T supported for the Jetson Nano and I found that the IMX296 sensor is not included in the kernel sources files. Please, follow the next steps to check for the IMX296 sensor in the kernel sources:

  1. Download the source file from https://developer.nvidia.com/downloads/remack-sdksjetpack-463r32releasev73sourcest210publicsourcestbz2. The file downloaded will call public_sources.tbz2

  2. Extract the public_sources.tbz2 contents file as:

tar -xvf public_sources.tbz2
  1. Move to the Linux_for_Tegra/source/public/ directory and extract the kernel_src.tbz2 where are the kernel sources file as:
cd Linux_for_Tegra/source/public/

tar -xvf  kernel_src.tbz2
  1. Move to the kernel/nvidia directory and look for the IMX296 and filtering the i2c since this is a CSI cameara and it would work through i2c. So:
cd kernel/nvidia

find -iname "*imx296*" | grep i2c

There is no output for this sensor.

  1. Also, you can check for the sensors that are supported as:
find -iname "*imx*" | grep i2c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx477.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx214.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx185_v1_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx318_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx390.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx219.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx318.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx390_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx219_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx268_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx185_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx268.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx274.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx274_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx185.c
./drivers/media/i2c/imx477_mode_tbls.h
./drivers/media/i2c/imx185_v1.c

I run the previous steps on a laptop with Ubuntu 18.04 OS.

As you can see, the IMX296 sensor is not included in the kernel sources. So the IMX296 does not come out of the box with the latest Nvidia official kernel for the Jetson Nano. However, in RidgeRun we can help you to develop the driver for the IMX296 sensor. We have expertise in this field. For example, you can check the
Raspberry Pi HQ camera IMX477 Driver | Linux driver for Jetson | RidgeRun - RidgeRun Developer Connection guide for the Raspberry Pi HQ camera IMX477

Hope this helps!
Regards!

Eduardo Salazar
Embedded SW Engineer at RidgeRun

Contact us: support@ridgerun.com
Developers wiki: https://developer.ridgerun.com/
Website: www.ridgerun.com

2 Likes
3

Eduardo, Thanks for the confirmation, this is great info.

Nonetheless, looking into the pointer you gave, I realized that adding a custom driver seems like a formidable task. I am totally not a linux developer, and never wanted to mess with the OS.

Nvidia folks, raspberry pi cameras including this global shutter one, are one of the most popular for the maker community. Since Eduardo and colleagues have the expertise, could you sort of sponsor and collaborate with them to add IMX296 into the OS out of the box and easy to use?

5

as mention above by EduardoSalazar96, you may see-also public release sources, IMX296 is not default supported.
you may see-also Jetson Partner Supported Cameras. there’re global shutter cameras provided by Jetson Camera Partners

7

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.