Question regarding internal webcams of tablet devices

Question regarding internal webcams of tablet devices

[Dennis Wassenberg]

Hi,

I have a couple of questions regarding support of internal webcams of
new/current generation of tablet devices. For example Lenovo X1, HP
Elite x2 1012 G1. There are internal webcams which are not connected via
USB. In fact they are connected via the

(00:14.3 Multimedia controller [0480]: Intel Corporation Device
[8086:9d32] (rev 01) / Intel Skylake-U/Y PCH - Camera IO Host Controller
(CSI2) [A1])

PCI device. The PCI device itself serves as a camera IO host controller
which communicates via CSI-2 over I2C to the camera sensors. As far as I
know there is currently no support for the CSI-2 host controller but I
have seen some support for camera sensors in general at v4l.

However, at first there is the need to get a driver for the camera IO
host controller PCI device. Is there anybody how knows a driver for that
pci device or known if there will be a driver for that in the future? Is
this the right way to support this kind of cameras or is there an other
way to get such cameras working with linux?

Thank you & best regards,

Dennis

Re: Question regarding internal webcams of tablet devices

[Daniel Glöckner]

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 08, 2016 at 04:21:01PM +0100, Dennis Wassenberg wrote:
> However, at first there is the need to get a driver for the camera IO
> host controller PCI device. Is there anybody how knows a driver for that
> pci device or known if there will be a driver for that in the future? Is
> this the right way to support this kind of cameras or is there an other
> way to get such cameras working with linux?

I know that Intel wrote a GPLv2 driver for the CSI host controller in
Merrifield, Baytrail, Anniedale and Cherrytrail. It is part of their
Android kernel. You might have luck searching for an Android kernel
for a Skylake tablet. But be careful, the driver I know only supports
a fixed set of configurations. It seems like Intel expects every
manufacturer to just copy their reference design down to the GPIO
numbers used to reset the camera sensors.

Best regards,

  Daniel

Re: Question regarding internal webcams of tablet devices

[Dennis Wassenberg]

Hi,

do you know where I can get the source code of these drivers for
Baytrail, Anniedale or Cherrytrail? I am not familiar with the Android
kernel. I checked git://git.code.sf.net/p/android-x86/kernel but could
not find any PCI CSI2 host controller driver. At
https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/x86_64.git I found some MIPI
stuff at drivers/external_drivers/intel_media/ but no CSI-2 driver.

Thank you & best regards,

Dennis

On 08.03.2016 17:23, Daniel Glöckner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Mar 08, 2016 at 04:21:01PM +0100, Dennis Wassenberg wrote:
>> However, at first there is the need to get a driver for the camera IO
>> host controller PCI device. Is there anybody how knows a driver for that
>> pci device or known if there will be a driver for that in the future? Is
>> this the right way to support this kind of cameras or is there an other
>> way to get such cameras working with linux?
> 
> I know that Intel wrote a GPLv2 driver for the CSI host controller in
> Merrifield, Baytrail, Anniedale and Cherrytrail. It is part of their
> Android kernel. You might have luck searching for an Android kernel
> for a Skylake tablet. But be careful, the driver I know only supports
> a fixed set of configurations. It seems like Intel expects every
> manufacturer to just copy their reference design down to the GPIO
> numbers used to reset the camera sensors.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
>   Daniel
> 

Re: Question regarding internal webcams of tablet devices

[Daniel Glöckner]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 12:16:55PM +0100, Dennis Wassenberg wrote:
> do you know where I can get the source code of these drivers for
> Baytrail, Anniedale or Cherrytrail? I am not familiar with the Android
> kernel. I checked git://git.code.sf.net/p/android-x86/kernel but could
> not find any PCI CSI2 host controller driver. At
> https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/x86_64.git I found some MIPI
> stuff at drivers/external_drivers/intel_media/ but no CSI-2 driver.

Sorry, didn't see your mail.

Search for atomisp2 and you will find it.

Best regards,

  Daniel