[Gta04-owner] GTA04 news

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi all,
quite a while since the last status report...

1. neil-plus-Kernel has got upgraded PVR/SGX to Graphics_SDK_setuplinux_4_08_00_02

This means we now can use the latest official armel and (new!) armhf libraries you find here:

	<http://software-dl.ti.com/dsps/dsps_public_sw/sdo_sb/targetcontent/gfxsdk/latest/index_FDS.html>

We have already packed them into Debian packages but they need a little more testing.


2. V4L2 subdevice Camera driver in neil-plus-Kernel starts to show something

I have taken the Aptina MT9P031 driver from the 3.7 kernel.org as the starting point
because it is known to work on the BeagleBoard XM . After fixing some things like i2c address,
manufacturer code etc. and removing all settings specific to the MT9P031 I was able
to power on, probe the camera and make it send out HSYNC/VSYNC and make
mplayer show a blurry and washed out image where I can vaguely recognize what
the camera is pointing at.

This means: the driver and the camera are basically working. And already a little better
than with the 2.6.32 implementation (where we did only see noise).

There is most likely a mismatch in the interpretation of the data format (e.g. RGB vs. UYUV
or 12 bit vs. 10 bit vs. 8 bit) between camera chip and the camera interface.

To make all this work, we need a special tool to control the OMAP3 image pipeline.
It is called media-ctl and we also have prepared a Debian package for it.

The latest kernel / driver code is available here (including the latest SGX driver):

	<http://git.goldelico.com/?p=gta04-kernel.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/neil-plus>

The media-ctl tool is here:

	<http://download.goldelico.com/gta04/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-armel/media-ctl_0.20130305224053_armel.deb>

And how to operate the camera can be seen in this demo script:

	<http://git.goldelico.com/?p=gta04-rootfs.git;a=blob;f=debian/config/root/camera-demo>

What I don't know yet is how well these new functions handle power management.


BR,
Nikolaus