Combine 2 Camarray – Arducam 1MP (OV9782 Color) to a total of 8 cameras

Nvidia Jetson Nano/NX Cameras
1

I successfully setup live video view from all 4 cameras of Camarray – Arducam 1MP (OV9782 Color) Quad-Camera Bundle Kit on a Jetson Nano by following this tutorial. Now I would like to add a 2nd Camarray of the same type and readout those cameras in parallel. According to a blog post this should be possible with some performance restrictions.
Could anyone give me some hints on how to achieve my goal?
a) from the hardware perspective: Is it enough to stack the 2nd board on top of the other one (same I2C bus) and attach the flex-cable to the other MIPI-CSI interface? Or do I need to tweak the board somehow so that it gets another I2C address?
b) from the software perspective: Can I simply start a 2nd instance of arducam_displayer with the address of the 2nd video interface?

I know that my framerate will probably drop very much. But my endgoal is to get single synchronized pictures rather than a video feed. So then I guess I should have no problems with performance.

Kind regards,
Michael

2

At present, Camarray HAT only supports 4 cameras at most, multiple HAT stacks just use the same GPIO power supply, and their I2C is independent (via MIPI-CSI interface)

Yes, these two HATs are independent, they use two different MIPI-CSI interfaces, so there are two video nodes, you can use them separately.

Since the two HATs are independent of each other, you cannot get 8 synchronized images, only the four cameras on a single HAT are synchronized.

3

Hi @wong

Thanks for you clarifications.

I guess I could use an external trigger to sync all of the cameras? Could I build it according to this article here or is there a specific article for using an external trigger for the OV9782 cameras?
On the camera PCB is the pin with the ‘F’ mark the one for applying the trigger? Does ‘G’ stand for GND?
Kind regards,
Michael

4

Theoretically yes,
But we haven’t tested it.