Preparing the software¶

In order to be able to receive video from a SDI-MIPI Bridge, the receiver must include drivers for both the Semtech GS2971A deserializer and the FPGA manager for loading the bitstream. Antmicro provides a preconfigured Linux kernel for the following devices:

Jetson Xavier NX
Jetson TX2
Raspberry Pi CM4

Building the BSP¶

To enable the SDI-MIPI Bridge support, you need to build the kernel with the required drivers and the device tree for the selected board. Choose a tab that matches your board and follow the instructions below.

Jetson Xavier NX Jetson TX2 Raspberry Pi CM4

The steps to fetch, build and apply it to a stock L4T 32.4.4 package are listed below.

Obtain and extract the cross-compilation toolchain:

wget http://releases.linaro.org/components/toolchain/binaries/7.3-2018.05/aarch64-linux-gnu/gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz
tar xf gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz
export PATH=$(pwd)/gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH

Obtain and set up the L4T-based host software:

wget https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/L4T/r32_Release_v4.4/r32_Release_v4.4-GMC3/T186/Tegra186_Linux_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2
tar xf Tegra186_Linux_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2
wget https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/L4T/r32_Release_v4.4/r32_Release_v4.4-GMC3/T186/Tegra_Linux_Sample-Root-Filesystem_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2
sudo tar xf Tegra_Linux_Sample-Root-Filesystem_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2 -C Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/
pushd Linux_for_Tegra
sudo ./apply_binaries.sh
sudo chown -R $USER rootfs/lib/modules
sudo chown -R $USER rootfs/lib/firmware
popd

Obtain the kernel sources and choose the branch that matches your hardware:

git clone https://github.com/antmicro/sdi-mipi-bridge-linux
pushd sdi-mipi-bridge-linux
git checkout tags/v1.5          # JNB rev. >=1.5, data on two MIPI CSI-2 lanes
# git checkout tags/v1.4.x      # JNB rev. <1.5, data on two MIPI CSI-2 lanes

Build the kernel:

export ARCH=arm64
export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
make tegra_defconfig
make -j$(nproc)

Install the kernel image, modules and device tree blob:

cp ./arch/arm64/boot/Image ../Linux_for_Tegra/kernel/
cp ./arch/arm64/boot/dts/tegra194-p3668-all-p3509-0000.dtb ../Linux_for_Tegra/kernel/dtb/
INSTALL_MOD_PATH=../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/ make modules_install
sudo chown -R root ../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/lib/modules
sudo chown -R root ../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/lib/firmware
popd

Copy the helper scripts from this repository to the root filesystem:

git clone https://github.com/antmicro/sdi-mipi-bridge
pushd sdi-mipi-bridge
cp -r scripts/* ../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/usr/local/bin/
popd

The steps to fetch, build and apply it to a stock L4T 32.4.4 package are listed below.

Obtain and extract the cross-compilation toolchain:

wget http://releases.linaro.org/components/toolchain/binaries/7.3-2018.05/aarch64-linux-gnu/gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz
tar xf gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.xz
export PATH=$(pwd)/gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/bin:$PATH

Obtain and set up the L4T-based host software:

wget https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/L4T/r32_Release_v4.4/r32_Release_v4.4-GMC3/T186/Tegra186_Linux_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2
tar xf Tegra186_Linux_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2
wget https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/L4T/r32_Release_v4.4/r32_Release_v4.4-GMC3/T186/Tegra_Linux_Sample-Root-Filesystem_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2
sudo tar xf Tegra_Linux_Sample-Root-Filesystem_R32.4.4_aarch64.tbz2 -C Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/
pushd Linux_for_Tegra
sudo ./apply_binaries.sh
sudo chown -R $USER rootfs/lib/modules
sudo chown -R $USER rootfs/lib/firmware
popd

Obtain the kernel sources and choose the branch that matches your hardware:

git clone https://github.com/antmicro/sdi-mipi-bridge-linux
pushd sdi-mipi-bridge-linux
git checkout tags/v1.5          # JNB rev. >=1.5, data on two MIPI CSI-2 lanes
# git checkout tags/v1.4.x      # JNB rev. <1.5, data on two MIPI CSI-2 lanes

Build the kernel:

pushd sdi-mipi-bridge-linux
export ARCH=arm64
export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
make tegra_defconfig
make -j$(nproc)

Install the kernel image, modules and device tree blob:

cp ./arch/arm64/boot/Image ../Linux_for_Tegra/kernel/
cp ./arch/arm64/boot/dts/tegra186-quill-p3310-1000-a00-00-base.dtb ../Linux_for_Tegra/kernel/dtb/
INSTALL_MOD_PATH=../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/ make modules_install
sudo chown -R root ../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/lib/modules
sudo chown -R root ../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/lib/firmware
popd

Copy the helper scripts from this repository to the root filesystem:

git clone https://github.com/antmicro/sdi-mipi-bridge
pushd sdi-mipi-bridge
cp -r scripts/* ../Linux_for_Tegra/rootfs/usr/local/bin/
popd

The Raspberry BSP is based on the Raspberry Pi distro, which is available on Raspberry Pi site. The kernel used on the device is based on the rpi-5.15.y branch of the Raspberry Pi fork of the Linux kernel.

Download Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) with desktop from the Raspberry Pi archives download site:
Unpack the archive:

xz -d 2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-arm64.img.xz

Write the SD card with the .img file:

dd if=2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-arm64.img of=/dev/sdX bs=512 # where X is a letter of a block device representing SD-Card

Download the ARM64 toolchain from Linaro release page and unpack it to your home directory.
Obtain Linux kernel sources:

git clone https://github.com/antmicro/sdi-mipi-bridge-linux-rpi

Build the Linux kernel:

cd sdi-mipi-bridge-linux-rpi
export PATH="${HOME}/gcc-linaro-7.3.1-2018.05-x86_64_aarch64-linux-gnu/bin":${PATH}
mkdir ../modules
export INSTALL_MOD_PATH=../modules/
export ARCH=arm64
export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu-
KERNEL=kernel8
make bcm2711_defconfig
make -j8
make -j8 modules_install

Uploading the BSP¶

Jetson Xavier NX Jetson TX2 Raspberry Pi CM4

To flash the software on the device, put it in recovery mode, connect to the host PC with a USB cable and use the following command:

pushd Linux_for_Tegra
sudo ./flash.sh jetson-xavier-nx-devkit-emmc mmcblk0p1
popd

To flash the software on the device, put it in recovery mode, connect to the host PC with a USB cable and use the following command:

pushd Linux_for_Tegra
sudo ./flash.sh jetson-tx2 mmcblk0p1
popd

Copy the binaries to the SD card:

cd sdi-mipi-bridge-linux-rpi
sudo cp arch/arm64/boot/dts/broadcom/*.dtb <sd_card>/boot/
sudo cp arch/arm64/boot/dts/overlays/*.dtb* <sd_card>/boot/overlays/
sudo cp arch/arm64/boot/dts/overlays/README <sd_card>/boot/overlays/
sudo cp arch/arm64/boot/Image <sd_card>/boot/
sudo cp -r ../modules/lib/modules/* <sd_card>/lib/modules/

Additionally, the <sd_card>/boot/config.txt file on the SD Card needs to include the following lines:

kernel=Image
dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host
dtoverlay=disable-bt
dtoverlay=sdi-mipi-bridge-j5-cam1-4lane

Insert the SD card into your board and power it on.

Last update: 2023-08-07