AR0521 support on Apalis imx8 with kirkstone-6.x.y BSP

Technical Support
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1

We have bought an Apalis imx8 on Ixora board, together with the AR0521 camera set.
The customer support told us that the camera was supported.
In fact I can found the related driver in the 5.7 dunfell based BSP, but I can’t find the same driver in the 6.x kirkstone BSP.

The problem is that I need gstreamer accelerated plugins that are only available in version 6.

So could you please tell me how I can use the ar0521 camera with the BSP version 6 ?

Thanks for help.

Regards.

2

Hi @cch,

Welcome to the Toradex Developer Community.

The AR0521 camera driver is not currently supported in BSP version 6.

I would recommend that you use BSP 5.7 LTS with this camera module for now.
The general steps to get set up are available in the Developer Website article First Steps with CSI Camera Set 5MP AR0521 Color (Linux).

The problem is that I need gstreamer accelerated plugins that are only available in version 6.

We have GStreamer accelerated plugins available in BSP 5.7, you can test them using our Reference Multimedia Image and following the article Video Encoding and Playback With GStreamer (Linux).

Best Regards,

3

Hello @cch ,
Do you have any updates on this topic?
Were you able to test the alternative solution given by @bruno.tx ?

Best regards,
Josep

4

Sorry for late reply due to holidays.

Yes I have downgraded the BSP to 5.7 and managed to use the AR0521 camera. It is a backup solution but it implies that we will be locked on an old version of Yocto and kernel, not ideal.

Regards

6

Hi @cch ,

I can confirm this is work in progress. We’re aware that the driver is missing. We’ll keep you updated.

Best Regards
Kevin

7

Hi,

is there any progress on this topic? Do you have a timeline for adding AR0521 support to BSP 6.x for Apalis or Verdin? (The DTO is there but the camera is not detected during startup.)

Thanks,
Markus

8

Hi @mko ,

Unfortunately, there’s no update on this one yet.

We’re working on it and we’ll keep you updated.

Best Regards
Kevin

9

Hi @cch , @mko ,

Our team has recently developed support for AR0521 in our BSP reference images 6.x (kirkstone-6.x.y) as a Yocto layer.

For now, you can download it here:

meta-toradex-econ-kirkstone-6.x.y.zip (153.0 KB)

Just add the meta-ar0521 layer in your Yocto build and the resulting image should include the driver, firmware and the devicetree overlays required for the camera.

As of now we’re writing an article in our developer page that will include the layer above and instructions/documentation on adding it to your Yocto build, but you should be able to follow the README included in there as well.

Best regards,
Lucas Akira

10

Thanks for the information @lucas_a.tx .

Unfortunately it is too late for our current project, but it will perhaps be useful for the future.

Regards.

11

Hi @cch ,

Thank you for the update. If you end up using the Yocto layer above for a future project, please let us know.

Best regards,
Lucas Akira

12

Hi all,

For future reference, we now have updated pages on the Toradex Developer Website showing how to use the Yocto Project layer and this camera module:

Best Regards,
Bruno Mello