Today we want to show a little something we’ve been working on.

A sneak-peak of a custom camera application we’ve developed for the NVidia Jetson.

About the application

The application is built upon a framework for camera control on any NVidia Jetson device that we’ve been recently working on. We’ve developed a layer over a few low-level APIs through which we can communicate to any camera on the Jetson.

What are the key functionalities:

  • Fine control over the ISP settings – exposure, gain and digital gain ranges, etc. 
  • Ability to capture Bayer RAW images 
  • Ability to record high-quality video at large resolution 

So how does it all click together?

By utilizing the NVidia Argus Camera API we can issue commands to the Jetson ISP. We can control exposure ranges, gain ranges, digital gain ranges, AWB, edge enhancement, denoising and more. Then what started as a lightweight GUI over the framework functionality is now evolving in a convenient camera test application that can be useful for a wide range of users.

The ability to manually select values for gain and exposure can be a great asset during camera driver verification.
Image Quality engineers can also benefit from the application in their tuning process. Not only do you have live control over the settings, but you can also with the click of a button save the processed image to disk.

Unfortunately the Argus API at this point cannot bypass the ISP and cannot save Bayer RAW files, but through V4L we’ve found a solution around that and should you want to save a RAW image, you can.

Our framework also builds on top of the Jetson Multimedia API and provides easy access to the NVidia Hardware H265 Encoder/Decoder to record and playback video. Also, by using the dedicated hardware we spare precious CPU and GPU resources for more important work. We’ve tested dual 4k video recording and it works great.

Extensions

Is there an important functionality you think we’re missing? Write it in the comments and we’ll do our best to add it.

Access

You want to play with the application yourself? No problem, send us an email and we’ll get back to you.