Considerations when choosing a CSI camera

Please note that using a CSI camera requires a Linux device driver for each model of CSI camera (image sensor). The device driver for the Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 mentioned earlier is already included in Jetson's L4T OS, so it's ready to go.

CSI cameras usually output image data in a format called Raw (Bayer). A module called Image Signal Processor (ISP) inside Jetson performs a number of processes such as CFA interpolation (demosaicing), noise removal, pixel defect correction, distortion correction, gamma correction, etc., and is handled by image processing software. Converts to image data that can be processed. However, the details of Jetson's ISP module are private, and only third parties called Jetson camera partners who have received special disclosure from NVIDIA can handle Jetson's ISP. Therefore, in order to use an unsupported CSI camera with Jetson, it is necessary to receive support (paid) from a Jetson camera partner. If the camera has an ISP function, bypassing Jetson's ISP may reduce the difficulty of device driver development, but development is still necessary. This situation is not specific to Jetson, and may apply to other platforms as well.

Note 1: There is no way to use Jetson's ISP with a USB connection.

How to use GStreamer

​nvarguscamerasrc element provided by NVIDIA. The easiest way to do this is to run the following command from a Jetson command window.You can access the CSI cameras using the

$ gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc ! nvoverlaysink

In the above example, the nvarguscamerasrc element is working with default settings, but you can check the parameters that can be set with the following command.

$ gst-inspect-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc

For example, to capture images from a CSI camera attached to the second camera connector on the Jetson Nano developer kit, set the sensor-id parameter to:

$ gst-launch-1.0 nvarguscamerasrc sensor-id=1 ! nvoverlaysink

However, if you start it from the command line as shown above, it will be less flexible and not suitable for embedding in your application.

How to use the Libargus Camera API

The Libargus Camera API, included in the Jetson Multitimedia API, allows fine-grained control over the CSI camera. There are many controls available and a wide variety of data that can be accessed, but that makes programming complicated. The sample code is included in JetPack and can be found in the path below.

/usr/src/jetson_multimedia_api/argus