This has been debated here a couple of times (i may have missed some thread but i’ve read a handful as well as https://elinux.org/Jetson/Cameras, and a lot of stuff is for other Jetson models) and we still have our doubts, especially with the Nano still being somewhat new.
We want to connect 2 cameras to a Jetson Nano (and stitch the feeds into one larger video, but from my tests the board isn’t powerful enough to do it in real-time, so it’d be done outside it). We care about image quality but don’t plan on spending a lot as we would be deploying several units. So as i understand we have these options:
USB (3.0): this seems like the easiest as e-con and some others have cheap options. I've been testing some USB 2.0 cameras but it doesn't seem like it can handle 1080p at a good framerate (20 or more). Also, as i understand all USB sockets share the bandwidth of 1 USB 3.0 interface, which could be limiting. Would 2x 1080p or 4k feeds be too much for it?
IP cameras: there's also IP cameras, but i have no experience with these and have no idea how to know if they would be compatible (apart from the elinux.org list); how would i go about connect several and still having the Ethernet socket free?
In short, we’re not clear if going through the hassle of a 3rd-party carrier board to use CSI cameras is necessary, or if going with USB3 would be enough, or even if IP would be best (but don’t know how to go about it). So any help is very much appreciated! I also welcome any opinion or experience anyone may want to share if they did something similar.
Sorry again for the basic question, but from what i gather each solution has its “gotchas” and i want to get a bigger picture.
If the reason you want 2 cameras is because you want to do stereo, you’ll probably be better off with the Stereolabs Zed (or Zed mini) or the latest Realsense camera from Intel, because they are already calibrated and frame synced – it’s very hard to sync up two external USB cameras to shutter at the same time.
If you want a “forward” and a “backward” camera or something like that, then using one USB camera and one CSI camera would be the simplest known-to-work option, although two USB 3 cameras probably would work, too, at least if you set them in MJPEG mode. (MJPEG is cheap to encode, even if you have to do it on the CPU.)
So, if you want the camera to have the same optical specs, two USB3 cameras seems like the right choice for you based on what you say above.
I’ve had bad experience with carrier board support from Auvidea, they seem to always be quite late and quite short on actual features, as well as quite bad at clear communications. I would not recommend buying carriers from them, based on this experience.
We actually want to record 180° panoramic video (without using one wildly wide lens as that would be unusable). That’s why we’re looking for stitching the video that comes out of 2 cameras (we’ll also consider stepping up to 3 if need be).
The sync should be the hardest part but it doesn’t have to be perfect (1/30th of a second off would be no trouble), i’ve already been writing the code to capture the MJPEG frames (with OpenCV). It’s funny to me you say it’s cheap to encode, i’d’ve thought it was kind of expensive because they’re uncompressed frames… buut i guess if no compression is being done on them then little work has to be done! So it makes sense (CPU, not memory).
I’ve already been trying with 2 USB 2.0 but they seem pretty slow and before buying other cameras we wanted to see if switching to CSI would be better. Your experience with Auvidea is really helpful because we’d really want to avoid steering into further problems (especially if we’re buying bulk later).
Thanks again! I’ll leave this unresolved for a couple more days in case anyone else can add their views :)
Leopard Imaging is coming out with their LI-NANO V1.1 board next month.
This might be your best bet as you can connect up two cameras, and the board is supposed to work with the production level Jetson Nano Modules.
That’s the route I’m going to go to connect two cameras.
I like the Leopard Imaging solution because they plan on using their standard I-PEX style cameras, and I like that interface a LOT better than the raspberry pi flex cable. It’s easier to route, and the connectors are locking.
I’ve had good support from Leopard Imaging in the past so I expect it to go fairly smoothly.