BeagleBone camera cape on Ubuntu 14.04

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1

Hi

I have a BeagleBone camera cape from QuickLogic like the one shown here: http://elinux.org/CircuitCo:BeagleBone_3.1MP_Camera.

I am running Ubuntu 14.04 on a BeagleBone Black. It looks like Ubuntu does not support the cape out of the box. I have spent a lot of time looking for a driver but could not find anything useful. I got the Ubuntu 14.04 image from here: http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu.

Angstrom on the other hand does come with camera cape support. It is mounted as /dev/video0, just like any V4L2 compatible device.

Can anoyone tell me how do I mount the camera as a V4L2 device on Ubuntu?

2

To fully support that cape, you need to downgrade to the v3.8.x kernel:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image-3.8.13-bone69
sudo reboot

Regards,

3

Hi Robert

Thanks a lot for your response. After downgrading the kernel, I got /dev/video0. The problem is, I cannot get an image from the camera. All I get is a black frame. I have tried both OpenCV and v4l2grab (https://github.com/twam/v4l2grab). The result was the same black image. Here are some (possibly) relevant information:

ubuntu@arm:~$ v4l2-ctl --info
Driver Info (not using libv4l2):
     Driver name   : cssp_camera
     Card type     : cssp_camera
     Bus info      : cssp_camera-000
     Driver version: 3.8.13
     Capabilities  : 0x05000001
         Video Capture
         Read/Write
         Streaming

ubuntu@arm:~$ v4l2-ctl --list-formats
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
     Index       : 0
     Type        : Video Capture
     Pixel Format: 'YUYV'
     Name        : 4:2:2, packed, YUYV

     Index       : 1
     Type        : Video Capture
     Pixel Format: 'RGBP'
     Name        : RGB565 (LE)

     Index       : 2
     Type        : Video Capture
     Pixel Format: 'RGBO'
     Name        : RGB555 (LE)

ubuntu@arm:~$ v4l2-ctl -V
Format Video Capture:
     Width/Height  : 640/480
     Pixel Format  : 'YUYV'
     Field         : None
     Bytes per Line: 1280
     Size Image    : 614400
     Colorspace    : JPEG (JFIF/ITU601)

Here is the relevant portion from dmesg (immediately after trying to capture an image with OpenCV): https://gist.github.com/shahriman/0c7d8dd2683a5d1abb8d.

I will really appreciate it if you can provide me some hint as to what might be the issue here.

Regards
Shakkhar

4

A common issue with this camera is that it takes several frames for the
automatic gain to kick in. Thus, you get black frames at first. Try
capturing a couple hundred frames at the same time and then look at the
last one.

5

Indeed, that did the trick. Thank you very much. Regards Shakkhar