ZED Link MIPI capture cards
If you recently purchased a StereoLabs ZED Link MIPI capture card, congratulations! This guide aims to help you become acquainted with the MIPI CSI-2 interface and to give you the essential information you need to begin utilizing StereoLabs ZED Link MIPI capture cards with NVIDIA® Jetson™ devices and our ZED X One Core cameras.
What is MIPI CSI-2?
MIPI CSI-2 (Camera Serial Interface 2) is the interface standardized by the MIPI Alliance to transport image sensor data, and it is the interface natively exposed by the camera ports of NVIDIA® Jetson™ modules. The data is carried over a short, multi-lane differential link: the camera connects directly to the capture card with a flat I-PEX cable, typically a few tens of centimeters long.
Unlike GMSL2, which serializes the video stream over a single coax or STP cable so that the camera can sit several meters away from the host, MIPI CSI-2 is a short-reach interface. This makes it suited to compact, tightly integrated systems where the cameras sit close to the host.
You can find detailed information about the MIPI configuration for our ZED Link MIPI cards in the respective datasheets.
The ZED X, ZED X Mini, ZED X Nano, ZED X One GS, and ZED X One 4K cameras do not use MIPI CSI-2. They stream over GMSL2 and require a ZED Link Mono, Duo, or Quad capture card, described on the “ZED Link GMSL2 capture cards” page.
ZED Link MIPI capture cards and ZED Link GMSL2 capture cards are not interchangeable. A ZED X One Core cannot be connected to a ZED Link Mono, Duo, or Quad card, and a GMSL2 camera cannot be connected to a ZED Link MIPI card. The two interfaces are electrically and mechanically different.
Setting up your system for using a MIPI camera
Make sure to have the necessary hardware to support the MIPI CSI-2 connection of the StereoLabs MIPI cameras.
The ZED X One Core does not support hot-plugging. Cameras must be connected and disconnected only when the host is powered off, and any change to the hardware configuration requires a full reboot of the host to take effect.
In this section, we will explain which configurations work with the ZED Link MIPI capture cards and provide instructions on how to set them up.
Please note that our MIPI cameras are only compatible with NVIDIA® Jetson™ platforms. Here is the list of currently supported NVIDIA® Jetson™ models along with the corresponding setup guide link for your hardware.
ZED Link MIPI Quad capture card
The ZED Link MIPI Quad enables you to connect up to four ZED X One Core cameras to specific NVIDIA® Jetson™ devices. Each of the four channels supports a camera at up to 1920x1200 @60 fps, and an onboard FPGA synchronizes the four channels in real time.
Multi-Camera Combinations
On an NVIDIA® Jetson AGX Orin™ Developer Kit, the four channels of the ZED Link MIPI Quad are independent and equivalent: each one drives a camera at full resolution and framerate, in any order, with no port-dependent restriction. An onboard FPGA hardware-synchronizes the four channels with a precision of 15 µs, so no jumper or external wiring is required. Please refer to the setup guide of the ZED Link MIPI Quad capture card for the details.
With the NVIDIA® Holoscan Sensor Bridge on a Jetson AGX Thor™, only the J1 and J2 channels of the card are wired through, so that configuration is limited to two cameras. A camera plugged into J3 or J4 is never detected. See the Jetson AGX Thor setup guide for the details.
Hardware reference
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