Connect Arducam HQ Camera to ROCK5B

#11

it can be a problem with pcie 3, 4 and 5 but i dont think csi is fast enguth

#12

Just got my Rock 5B on hand, any updates on this project? I have an ArduCam 16MP AutoFocus Camera (which i am not sure whether it is 2-lane or 4-lane, but it should be using the same connector) but i will be interested in having an adapter or a cable to allow the 5B to work with these cameras (especially to get MIPI CSI in 4-lanes)

#13

Someone with experience in high speed PCB design told me they’d do the CSI traces for me so I’m waiting for him.

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#14

all pi cameras are 2 lanee as far as i know

#15

oh cool that means a high quality design

#16

Well yeah, but we are having ArduCam camera module which from the beginning of the post, his ArduCam HQ Camera seems claiming 4-lanes CSI.

#17

is that even possible on a pi 4 because i always thought 2 lanes are for the csi connector and the other 2 lanes are unused

#18

For the Pi 4, i guess they only have two lanes physically exposed to the CSI connector.

However, the Pi CM4 does supports 4-lanes CSI, just took a quick look on the Rock 5B’s schematic, it seems like we have a 30 pin (*it should be 31-pin 0.3mm pitch) CSI connector that expose all 4-lanes with two clock available (AN,AP,CAM0-CLK) and (BN,BP,CAM1-CLK).

So i am curious, does that means our rock 5B can support either 1x 4-lanes CSI Camera or 2x 2-lanes CSI Camera ? Would that means a Dual 4K Camera setup is possible ?

#19

i knew that about the cm4 and it would be amazing to have 2x4k cameras for 3d or twin survailence cameras

#20

does that means our rock 5B can support either 1x 4-lanes CSI Camera or 2x 2-lanes CSI Camera ? Would that means a Dual 4K Camera setup is possible ?

Yes, two 2-lanes camera is possible.

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#21

You may want to check this one:

https://dl.radxa.com/accessories/camera-4k/radxa_camera_4k_Revision_0.8_g29f7fed.pdf

#22

would it be possible to use an raspberry pi hq camera with the rock 5b (of course with an adaptor), it has an imx477 sensor

#23

If it was in stock I would’ve bought it already.

#24

It is really interesting to know that we can get two 2-lanes cameras running on our Rock 5B.

So I designed an adapter to convert our Rock 5B’s CSI into Two 2-Lanes 15-Pin CSI (Raspberry Pi Model B Camera compatible) Connector.
https://oshwlab.com/kwankiu/rock5b-dualcsi

Note: This is my first time trying to design PCB, therefore I am not sure whether this works or not. I would appreciate it if someone would take a look at my design to see if I made any mistakes.

There are two samples (standard and mini) of how our adapter can be designed. However, routing and trace length matching is not done (only finnished it with EasyEDA’s auto-routing) appreciate it if anyone would help with that.

The standard one puts all connectors on the top layer (larger pcb size), while the mini one put CAM1 at the bottom layer (which reduces the adapter size significantly). Therefore, If it is possible, I prefer making it double-sided mini version.

Additionally, I noticed one issue while allowing two camera connected through this design. We only have one pair of I2C for two camera module.

#25

I2C is a multi-slave protocol so in theory that shouldn’t be too big of an issue. Although if both cameras have the same I2C address there could be problems. I think maybe the PDN pins exist to address that.

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#26

Thanks for the information.

Just for reference, there seems to be a similar issue on the Pi CM4 :
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=327042

#27

easyeda has a differential pair function su you could try that

#28

Yeah but you have to cross over so the tool isn’t very useful. Plus the length matching tool doesn’t work with pairs AFAIK.

#29

I’d appreciate it if a Radxa dev could yoink the IMX477 driver from the raspberry pi and add it to the Rock5 kernel.

#30

i am no linux kernel dev but it could be well possible