.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 Writing camera sensor drivers ============================= CSI-2 and parallel (BT.601 and BT.656) busses --------------------------------------------- Please see :ref:`transmitter-receiver`. Handling clocks --------------- Camera sensors have an internal clock tree including a PLL and a number of divisors. The clock tree is generally configured by the driver based on a few input parameters that are specific to the hardware: the external clock frequency and the link frequency. The two parameters generally are obtained from system firmware. **No other frequencies should be used in any circumstances.** The reason why the clock frequencies are so important is that the clock signals come out of the SoC, and in many cases a specific frequency is designed to be used in the system. Using another frequency may cause harmful effects elsewhere. Therefore only the pre-determined frequencies are configurable by the user. ACPI ~~~~ Read the ``clock-frequency`` _DSD property to denote the frequency. The driver can rely on this frequency being used. Devicetree ~~~~~~~~~~ The preferred way to achieve this is using ``assigned-clocks``, ``assigned-clock-parents`` and ``assigned-clock-rates`` properties. See the `clock device tree bindings `_ for more information. The driver then gets the frequency using ``clk_get_rate()``. This approach has the drawback that there's no guarantee that the frequency hasn't been modified directly or indirectly by another driver, or supported by the board's clock tree to begin with. Changes to the Common Clock Framework API are required to ensure reliability. Power management ---------------- Camera sensors are used in conjunction with other devices to form a camera pipeline. They must obey the rules listed herein to ensure coherent power management over the pipeline. Camera sensor drivers are responsible for controlling the power state of the device they otherwise control as well. They shall use runtime PM to manage power states. Runtime PM shall be enabled at probe time and disabled at remove time. Drivers should enable runtime PM autosuspend. The runtime PM handlers shall handle clocks, regulators, GPIOs, and other system resources required to power the sensor up and down. For drivers that don't use any of those resources (such as drivers that support ACPI systems only), the runtime PM handlers may be left unimplemented. In general, the device shall be powered on at least when its registers are being accessed and when it is streaming. Drivers should use ``pm_runtime_resume_and_get()`` when starting streaming and ``pm_runtime_put()`` or ``pm_runtime_put_autosuspend()`` when stopping streaming. They may power the device up at probe time (for example to read identification registers), but should not keep it powered unconditionally after probe. At system suspend time, the whole camera pipeline must stop streaming, and restart when the system is resumed. This requires coordination between the camera sensor and the rest of the camera pipeline. Bridge drivers are responsible for this coordination, and instruct camera sensors to stop and restart streaming by calling the appropriate subdev operations (``.s_stream()``, ``.enable_streams()`` or ``.disable_streams()``). Camera sensor drivers shall therefore **not** keep track of the streaming state to stop streaming in the PM suspend handler and restart it in the resume handler. Drivers should in general not implement the system PM handlers. Camera sensor drivers shall **not** implement the subdev ``.s_power()`` operation, as it is deprecated. While this operation is implemented in some existing drivers as they predate the deprecation, new drivers shall use runtime PM instead. If you feel you need to begin calling ``.s_power()`` from an ISP or a bridge driver, instead add runtime PM support to the sensor driver you are using and drop its ``.s_power()`` handler. See examples of runtime PM handling in e.g. ``drivers/media/i2c/ov8856.c`` and ``drivers/media/i2c/ccs/ccs-core.c``. The two drivers work in both ACPI and DT based systems. Control framework ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ``v4l2_ctrl_handler_setup()`` function may not be used in the device's runtime PM ``runtime_resume`` callback, as it has no way to figure out the power state of the device. This is because the power state of the device is only changed after the power state transition has taken place. The ``s_ctrl`` callback can be used to obtain device's power state after the power state transition: .. c:function:: int pm_runtime_get_if_in_use(struct device *dev); The function returns a non-zero value if it succeeded getting the power count or runtime PM was disabled, in either of which cases the driver may proceed to access the device. Frame size ---------- There are two distinct ways to configure the frame size produced by camera sensors. Freely configurable camera sensor drivers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Freely configurable camera sensor drivers expose the device's internal processing pipeline as one or more sub-devices with different cropping and scaling configurations. The output size of the device is the result of a series of cropping and scaling operations from the device's pixel array's size. An example of such a driver is the CCS driver (see ``drivers/media/i2c/ccs``). Register list based drivers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Register list based drivers generally, instead of able to configure the device they control based on user requests, are limited to a number of preset configurations that combine a number of different parameters that on hardware level are independent. How a driver picks such configuration is based on the format set on a source pad at the end of the device's internal pipeline. Most sensor drivers are implemented this way, see e.g. ``drivers/media/i2c/imx319.c`` for an example. Frame interval configuration ---------------------------- There are two different methods for obtaining possibilities for different frame intervals as well as configuring the frame interval. Which one to implement depends on the type of the device. Raw camera sensors ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Instead of a high level parameter such as frame interval, the frame interval is a result of the configuration of a number of camera sensor implementation specific parameters. Luckily, these parameters tend to be the same for more or less all modern raw camera sensors. The frame interval is calculated using the following equation:: frame interval = (analogue crop width + horizontal blanking) * (analogue crop height + vertical blanking) / pixel rate The formula is bus independent and is applicable for raw timing parameters on large variety of devices beyond camera sensors. Devices that have no analogue crop, use the full source image size, i.e. pixel array size. Horizontal and vertical blanking are specified by ``V4L2_CID_HBLANK`` and ``V4L2_CID_VBLANK``, respectively. The unit of the ``V4L2_CID_HBLANK`` control is pixels and the unit of the ``V4L2_CID_VBLANK`` is lines. The pixel rate in the sensor's **pixel array** is specified by ``V4L2_CID_PIXEL_RATE`` in the same sub-device. The unit of that control is pixels per second. Register list based drivers need to implement read-only sub-device nodes for the purpose. Devices that are not register list based need these to configure the device's internal processing pipeline. The first entity in the linear pipeline is the pixel array. The pixel array may be followed by other entities that are there to allow configuring binning, skipping, scaling or digital crop :ref:`v4l2-subdev-selections`. USB cameras etc. devices ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ USB video class hardware, as well as many cameras offering a similar higher level interface natively, generally use the concept of frame interval (or frame rate) on device level in firmware or hardware. This means lower level controls implemented by raw cameras may not be used on uAPI (or even kAPI) to control the frame interval on these devices. Rotation, orientation and flipping ---------------------------------- Some systems have the camera sensor mounted upside down compared to its natural mounting rotation. In such cases, drivers shall expose the information to userspace with the :ref:`V4L2_CID_CAMERA_SENSOR_ROTATION ` control. Sensor drivers shall also report the sensor's mounting orientation with the :ref:`V4L2_CID_CAMERA_SENSOR_ORIENTATION `. Use ``v4l2_fwnode_device_parse()`` to obtain rotation and orientation information from system firmware and ``v4l2_ctrl_new_fwnode_properties()`` to register the appropriate controls. Sensor drivers that have any vertical or horizontal flips embedded in the register programming sequences shall initialize the V4L2_CID_HFLIP and V4L2_CID_VFLIP controls with the values programmed by the register sequences. The default values of these controls shall be 0 (disabled). Especially these controls shall not be inverted, independently of the sensor's mounting rotation.