What of the AGX Orin's Video Input Hardware can be Dynamically Powered Off

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson AGX Orin
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We have an AGX Orin based system running R35.4.1 that may or may not have its MIPI-CSI video input enabled, depending on user configuration. In order to save power I would like to disable the video input hardware, such as VI & NVCSI, and would like to be able to do it dynamically as needed without rebooting.

  • Is that supported?
  • Is there documentation on how to do it?
  • Alternatively, is slowing the clock the only way to limit the SOM hardware’s video input power?

Thanks in advance!

4

Hello @chrisrfq,

That is a very interesting use case.

When you say you want to power off the VI hardware, what specific HW are you talking about?

I ask because the power lines for CSI connectors are managed by the sensor/device driver. And they are usually powered off while no video is being capture.

So I assume yo want to also power off other HW, is that right ?

best regards,
Andrew
Embedded Software Engineer at ProventusNova

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6

Any hardware on the SOM that is unneeded because there is no video input coming in over CSI. If the driver for that hardware block fully turns off that hardware, then that’s great.

If there is other related Orin hardware that could be turned off, then that would be of interest also. Just trying to reduce all unneeded power.

Thanks for your response!

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I am wanting to learn how to make sure all video input hardware on the SOM turns off completely when no video is coming in over the MIPI CSI port. In my post above I was indicating what I wanted to do, not what actually happens. It looks like it was marked as the solution, but it wasn’t a solution. It was a question about how the hardware behaves.

Sometimes we’ll need to bring video in over MIPI CSI, but sometimes not. When we don’t need video input that way, we want to turn appropriate hardware blocks off completely to minimize power.

Questions to clarify:

  1. What needs to happen to turn off the VI (video ingest) module to minimize power?
  2. Is there anything we need to do to turn the ISP module or VIC (compositor) module off?
  3. Are there other modules I should be concerned about?

Thanks!

9
  1. It’s off when you close the camera pipeline.
  2. Terminal the APP then driver will power off the relative modules.
  3. Depend on your use case. Suppose when you terminal the camera all of the involve modules should power off driver stream_off command.
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