Bringing New Cameras to the NXP i.MX95
Having received a new FRDM i.MX 95 Development Board, I was excited to try out the 22-pin camera interface, which is compatible with the Raspberry Pi 22-pin camera ecosystem. Today I have brought up the Sony IMX283 20.3 megapixel in just a few hours. The camera module I used was created as an open source camera module by Will Whang.
This camera module uses the Raspberry Pi 22-pin camera connector, and I know the sensor well, having supported and upstreamed the driver for it into the Linux Kernel.
Mainline Support
Bringing up the FRDM95 i.MX95 board itself is straightforward, thanks to the platform already being well on it’s way upstream. Unfortunately the ISP and ISI drivers are not fully upstream yet, so after booting the latest Linux v7.1, I reverted back to the NXP BSP v6.18 kernel. I look forward to repeating this on a fully mainline kernel as the platform support continues to progress upstream.
Connecting Cameras
The first steps of bringing up a camera on a new platform usually involve enabling the correct GPIOs and making sure the FFC cable is connected in the correct orientation. This is not always an easy thing to get right; there is no standard cable format, and often no keying to ensure the cable stiffener is on the correct side.
I used our custom 22-pin breakout board to verify the GPIO signals with a quick addition of some LEDs and resistors. After that, the next step was to create a new device-tree overlay to enable the ISP and camera pipeline and verify the media graph populates correctly:
Integrating the Sony IMX283 required making some updates to the NXP libcamera fork, but we will work towards getting this upstream to make use of our upcoming libipa developments. This will make it even easier to support the full range of upstream cameras across more platforms.
Selfie time!
While the NXP i.MX95 NeoISP driver is not yet upstream, we’re looking forward to continuing to support NXP with their upstreaming efforts for both the ISP drivers and libcamera. This will help give NXP customers truly long-term support with open source camera systems.
Summary
With the FRDM i.MX95 board exposing a Raspberry Pi 22-pin compatible camera connector, we can bring many cameras modules from the Raspberry Pi camera ecosystem to the NXP platform using open source drivers and libcamera support.
Our focus is on helping customers build camera products around upstream and mainline solutions wherever possible. New platforms often begin their life in vendor BSPs, but by aligning that work with upstream Linux, libcamera, and open source sensor drivers, we can help reduce long-term maintenance, simplify future updates, and make camera support easier to carry across product generations.
If you would like to use the NXP i.MX95, i.MX8MP, or other NXP platforms for your camera project, Contact us. We would love to help!