Rock 3 CSI camera dark green image problem

[stardust]

Hello. I’ve been trying to use an IMX-219 CSI camera with Rock 3A and Rock 3C.
My problem is that no matter what I do, the image is always dark green (on both boards and also 4SE).

I am aware that this is a well-known and very often encountered problem with the software.
Probably it’s configuration-related or something.

CSI cameras are extremely important to me in my projects…
So I wanted to ask - what would be the final and general solution for this?

Maybe it would be a good idea to add the instructions on how to fix this to the documentation?

P.S. Also I noticed that on the 3A the gstreamer1.0-rockchip1 package isn’t available and therefore mpp plugins aren’t available for GStreamer.

[Peter.Wang]

@ken please give some advice

[ken]

May I ask which image you are using?
You use the command ps -aux | grep rkaiq_3A_server to see if the aiq is running.

[stardust]

You mean the OS image? Right, sorry, I forgot to mention.
I’m using Debian Bullseye CLI release B39 because the newest B42 freezes on bootup.

The command that you gave gives the following output:

radxa        739  0.0  0.0   6036   632 pts/0    S+   12:52   0:00 grep rkaiq_3A_server

[ken]

You can have a try with command apt full-upgrade

[stardust]

Why would that matter? My current OS image is completely up-to-date.
I always do updates first thing after installing a new image.

    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree... Done
    Reading state information... Done
    Calculating upgrade... Done
    The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
      yq
    Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Can we return to the camera problem?

[ken]

Because you’re using a cli image without a desktop, there are a lot of packages missing by default, and you can install the missing packages with the command sudo apt install task-rock3c

If you want to use the camera, I still recommend you to use our latest image with desktop，the function support is more complete!
https://github.com/radxa-build/rock-3c/releases/download/b42/rock-3c_debian_bullseye_xfce_b42.img.xz

[stardust]

Huh? Why would they make the decision not to include some of the functionalities in CLI images for the 3 series? RK356X are too weak to handle a desktop environment in a usable way anyway so making it a requirement only wastes RAM and disk space.

I can confirm that installing said package (task-rock-3c, there’s a dash missing) did make the camera work properly, but…

I swear I’m not complaining just for the sake of it. I’m simply genuinely confused, especially since Raspberry Pi CLI images have full camera support no problem.

[ken]

In general, we recommend using the desktop version of the image, cli version of the temporary support is not comprehensive, must be used cli, you need to install their own.

[stardust]

That is not what I’m asking. I understand what you’re saying. I understood what you said the first time.
What I’m asking is “why?”.

The 3 and 4 series aren’t performant enough to handle a desktop environment.
And hardware acceleration isn’t present anyway.
So why make a DE version in the first place?

[Jonathan_Marquette]

I got same issue and when i try to install the package task-rock3c

rock@rock-3c:~$ sudo apt install task-rock3c
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package task-rock3c

[stardust]

Can you tell us what OS image you are using?
Did you do “sudo apt update” before trying to install?

Maybe something changed in the package name.
I usually use apt search to find the exact name. In this case I’d do it this way:

apt search task | grep "rock"

It’s not the perfect way to search, but heck, I dunno how to use Linux command line tools so it works well enough for me.

[Jonathan_Marquette]

yes here’s the details:

i have a rock3c 2gb and a ov5647 200deg for camera

for the OS Image i use rock-3c_ubuntu_jammy_cli_b39.img.xz directly download from the radxa website…

with

apt search task | grep “rock”

i found that the package was task-rock-3c

but before the installation of this package with some tweaking of the calibration… the camera was able to work with this command

gst-launch-1.0 v4l2src device=/dev/video0 io-mode=4 ! videoconvert ! video/x-raw,format=NV12,width=1920,height=1080 ! videoflip method=rotate-180 ! videobalance saturation=1.0 contrast=1.0 brightness=0.3 ! jpegenc ! multifilesink location=images44/%d.jpg

and now with the same command line XD

but with opencv, nothing change, i still got the same quality that is crappy as hell!

hope that will help

[stardust]

Well… Maybe just try using the officially supported OS which is Debian Bullseye XFCE.
Also… The OV5647 is a crappy sensor all by itself, so don’t expect miracles…

[ken]

I used our ov5647 camera image preview and opencv test.

https://docs.radxa.com/rock3/rock3b/app-development/opencv

[Jonathan_Marquette]

what do you suggest? would imx219 be better?

[Raphael]

getting radxa and rockchip to actually help people making new cameras would be a start

[stardust]

New cameras? lol. Not even the current ones are working… Especially on the Rock 5 series… It’s like the support comes for a second and then disappears for months…

But I kinda get it. It’s visible that Radxa is quite strained when it comes to software development. Hopefully by the end of next year, the matter of software will be solved.

Until then, I guess I’ll stick to USB cameras only.

[Raphael]

Yeah it looks like nobody cares there. When asking for help I mainly got a info that said “you need to buy the sdk to get help from us”.
On the rock5 I’m still tweaking stuff, but my kernel will have a few more goodies, like the imx462,imx477,imx708,imx519 support.
Just still having tons of problems

Sadly on the Rock3 side of things we never really got far, and rockchip just complains that I’m not buying the 10.000usd sdk to develop opensource stuff.

[stardust]

Ha! At least you’re smart enough to be able to tinker with the kernel! The best I can do was activating the overlays before rsetup was a thing. I can semi-understand the concepts involved in all of this, but I’m far from being able to do anything all by myself. No cams for me I guess…

Shame I’m stuck with four useless 4Ks that I wanted to use with the NPU for AI-assisted monitoring or control…

P.S. Rock 3 IMHO ain’t worth it anyway, neither from the performance per watt, nor from the price to performance ratio’s perspective…