Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Camera & ISP at Linux Plumbers Conference

[johannes.goede@oss.qualcomm.com]

Hi,

On 15-Sep-26 01:38, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> As most of you already know, the Linux Plumbers Conference will host a
> Camera & ISP BoF in Prague in three weeks ([1]).
> 
> The initial proposal for a microconference has unfortunately been
> downgraded by the program committee to a 45 minutes BoF. We have
> therefore decided to limit the discussion to three topics at most. Two
> topics have been approved so far:
> 
> - RGB-IR support in V4L2 and libcamera
> 
>   by Rishikesh Donadkar and Devarsh Thakkar, Texas Instruments
> 
>   The Linux kernel V4L2 API does not support RGB-IR image sensors.
>   While building blocks necessary to handle those devices are slowly
>   being merged, RGB-IR support itself hasn't been tackled yet.
> 
>   Rishikesh and Devarsh will also present this topic at the OSS Europe
>   conference ([2]).

Related to this, we are seeing various people working on plain IR
sensors found on Windows Hello capable laptops, both on IPU6/IPU7
as well as on Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops.

I would like us to discuss and ideally agree on a userspace API for
the IR flood LED-s on these devices. I hope we can schedule some
time for this?

I actually just got send a Devicetree snippet off-list which enables
the IR flood LED on a Snapdragon laptop using the already existing
Flash LED support in a PMIC driver.

I think this, combined with an auxiliary media-controller link to
link the Flash LED class device to the IR sensor probably is the best
way to handle IR flood LEDs, but we do need consensus on this and
to document it.

We also may want to offer some sort of auto on in flash-light mode
when streaming support for these (1) to make things easier for userspace
or we clearly need to document that userspace needs to enable this
itself.

Regards,

Hans


1) With a v4l2-control to turn it off when userspace wants more
fine grained control.




> - Camera module identification
> 
>   by Stefan Klug, Ideas on Board
> 
>   Camera tuning and calibration depend not only on the image sensor, but
>   also on the lens and other characteristics of camera modules. While
>   Linux supports identifying image sensors, it completely lacks the
>   concept of camera modules. 
> 
>   Identification of camera modules requires coordination between
>   platform firmware (DT or ACPI), the kernel and userspace. Discussions
>   will benefit from the presence of DT maintainers.
> 
> We can consider scheduling a third topic. Proposals are welcome.
> 
> Due to the 45 minutes BoF format, we will focus on discussions and won't
> be able to afford presentations. All topic leads are expected to
> circulate discussion materials on public mailing lists at least a week
> before the event to give attendees time to read through proposals. The
> materials should summarize the issue at hand and the ongoing work, and
> clearly state the questions that will be discussed during the BoF.
> Slides that support the discussions, if any, should also be submitted
> prior to the event.
> 
> If there is enough interest, I am considering booking a meeting room on
> Wednesday morning (location to be determined, likely outside of the LPC
> venue) to extend the BoF. We could continue discussions on the topics
> listed above, as well as schedule additional topics. We would overlap
> with the following LPC microconferences:
> 
> - Networking Track
> - Containers and checkpoint/restore MC
> - Rust MC
> - Scheduler and Real-Time MC
> - Build Systems MC
> 
> Please let me know if you would be interested in attending a Wednesday
> morning session by replying to this e-mail (publicly or privately). If
> you would like to propose additional topics, please do so publicly.
> 
> 
> [1] https://lpc.events/event/20/contributions/2364/
> [2] https://osselceu2026.sched.com/event/2RaZj/enabling-multi-stream-camera-sensors-in-linux-rgb+ir-streams-and-embedded-metadata-rishikesh-donadkar-devarsh-thakkar-texas-instruments
>