[libcamera-devel] [EXTERNAL] Re: Porting libCamera in to RDKC

[Dubey, Vijayanand]

Hi Laurent
Here are the current  RDKC cameras' SoC datasheets.
https://www.ambarella.com/wp-content/uploads/S2Lm-Product-Brief-Final.pdf (xCAM/iCAM2)
http://www.ambarella.com/wp-content/uploads/S3L-Product-Brief.pdf(xCAM2)
https://www.ambarella.com/wp-content/uploads/S5L-Product-Brief.pdf(doorbell)

They are fully ARM SoCs and we do have upstream Linux kernel support for these products.

Regards
Vijay


On 6/8/20, 10:43 AM, "Laurent Pinchart" <laurent.pinchart at ideasonboard.com> wrote:

    Hi Vijay,

    On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 02:30:08PM +0000, Dubey, Vijayanand wrote:
    > Hi Laurent
    >
    > Thanks for the response. RDKC's hardware platform is Ambarella (Armv7
    > and Arm8 architecture).

    Is there any public documentation about the hardware ? I had a quick at
    https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ambarella.com/__;!!CQl3mcHX2A!RVOtR3839oNUz-HBH96O9FkjgrUuzURPPdxmmyeqV5ORt35ZpuFCz5vvW8JUfkvmq41K$ , are the camera-related chips co-processors
    that need to be paired with a traditional SoC, or are they full ARM SoCs
    ? Will there be any upstream Linux kernel support for those products ?

    > On 6/5/20, 9:09 PM, "Laurent Pinchart" <laurent.pinchart at ideasonboard.com> wrote:
    > > On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 07:13:06PM +0000, Dubey, Vijayanand wrote:
    > > > Hi,
    > > >
    > > > This is Vijay form RDK for Camera (RDKC) team in Comcast.
    > >
    > > Nice to meet you, and thanks for your interest in libcamera.
    > >
    > > > We are trying to understand how can we fit libCamera in our current
    > > > architecture. In our current RDKC architecture as shown in the block diagram,
    > > >
    > > > [cid]
    > > >
    > > > camera  has process called xStreamer. It runs as a web server (producer )and
    > > > provides H264 /PCM/G711/AAC/YUV data to client applications (e.g.;  live, cvr,
    > > > video analytics etc.). Moreover it
    > > >
    > > >   ● Controls the encoding parameter
    > > >   ● control single and multi-stream encoding
    > > >   ● Overlay on stream
    > > >
    > > > Camera has separate processes  for Live, CVR and video analytics  which connect
    > > > to xStreamer and send the request to configure the encoding  parameter and get
    > > > the encoded or RAW AV data over socket.
    > > >
    > > > Based on our initial investigation of libCamera  architecture I have couple of
    > > > questions
    > > >
    > > > It seems current architecture of  libCamera requires to have a single process
    > > > with  all functionalities(Live/CVR/Analytics etc.) Is our understanding
    > > > correct? If yes is their plan to support the RDKC use case in libCamera? In no
    > > > how can we align RDKC architecture with libCamera?
    > >
    > > Your understanding is correct. While libcamera allows access to
    > > different cameras from the same process, it doesn't support multiple
    > > processes sharing the same camera concurrently.
    > >
    > > This is a feature we don't plan to add to libcamera at the moment, as we
    > > consider it out of scope. libcamera is meant to be a low-level library
    > > to control cameras, and especially computational cameras requiring
    > > algorithms running on the main CPU. Sharing cameras between different
    > > processes is a feature of a higher-level component in the stack. On
    > > desktop Linux systems, pipewire will fulfil this (as well as offering
    > > access control features), based on libcamera as the camera provider. I
    > > believe embedded Linux systems would also benefit from pipewire usage.
    > >
    > > I would assume there are other middlewares that allow sharing cameras
    > > between multiple processes. It maye make sense to add libcamera support
    > > to one of such existing middlewares, or to develop a new one specific to
    > > RDKC. I haven't researched this topic in details, so I can't tell which
    > > option would be best, but I'm available for further discussions on this
    > > topic.
    > >
    > > Which hardware platforms does RDKC officially support or plans to
    > > support ?

    --
    Regards,

    Laurent Pinchart