Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2020

Video for Linux (v4l) is a well-established infrastructure for interfacing with video cameras, providing a comprehensive API for camera control and data acquisition. With the advent of the Time of Flight (TOF) cameras, outputting synchronized depth and IR images, there are a few challenges when writing kernel v4l drivers as well as user space applications since these cameras have different controls, more operating modes and, in many cases, different MIPI data formats and more virtual channels than traditional RGB cameras. This session talks about the implementation of the v4l driver for the Analog Devices ADDI9036 ToF processor, with an emphasis on the additional features that had to be implemented to expose the ToF camera's full functionality and on the changes that had to be made to get the same driver, or platform specific variants of it, working on different computing platforms such as Raspberry Pi, NXP i.MX8, Nvidia Xavier AGX or the Rockchip RK3399. It also introduces the user space software stack required to interface with the ToF camera, providing the full picture of the software components that are required to get a ToF camera working on embedded platforms running Linux.