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hansdegoedeMany recent Intel laptops have replaced the standard UVC USB camera module with a raw MIPI camera-sensor connected to the IPU6 found in recent Intel laptop chips.
Both the hw interface of the ISP part of the IPU6 as well as the image processing algorithms used are considered a trade secret and so far the only Linux support for the IPU6 relies on an out of tree kernel driver with a proprietary userspace stack on top, which is currently available in rpmfusion.
Both Linaro and Red Hat have identified the missing ISP support for various ARM and X86 chips as a problem. Linaro has started a project to add a SoftwareISP component to libcamera to allow these cameras to work without needing proprietary software and Red Hat has joined Linaro in working on this.
FOSDEM talk
Bryan O'Donoghue (Linaro) and I are giving a talk about this at FOSDEM.
Fedora COPR repository
This work is at a point now where it is ready for wider testing. A Fedora COPR repository with a patched kernel and libcamera is now available for users to test, see the COPR page for install and test instructions.
This has been tested on the following devices:
Description of the stack
Both the hw interface of the ISP part of the IPU6 as well as the image processing algorithms used are considered a trade secret and so far the only Linux support for the IPU6 relies on an out of tree kernel driver with a proprietary userspace stack on top, which is currently available in rpmfusion.
Both Linaro and Red Hat have identified the missing ISP support for various ARM and X86 chips as a problem. Linaro has started a project to add a SoftwareISP component to libcamera to allow these cameras to work without needing proprietary software and Red Hat has joined Linaro in working on this.
FOSDEM talk
Bryan O'Donoghue (Linaro) and I are giving a talk about this at FOSDEM.
Fedora COPR repository
This work is at a point now where it is ready for wider testing. A Fedora COPR repository with a patched kernel and libcamera is now available for users to test, see the COPR page for install and test instructions.
This has been tested on the following devices:
- Lenovo ThinkPad X1 yoga gen 8 (should work on any ThinkPad with ov2740 sensor)
- Dell Latitude 9420 (ov01a1s sensor)
- HP Spectre x360 13.5 (2023 model, hi556 sensor)
Description of the stack
- Kernel driver for the camera sensor, for the ov2740 used on current Lenovo designs (excluding MTL) I have landed all necessary kernel changes for this upstream.
- Kernel support for the CSI receiver part of the IPU6 Intel is working on upstreaming this and has recently posted v3 of their patch series for this upstream and this is under active review.
- A FOSS Software ISP stack inside libcamera to replace the missing IPU6 ISP (processing-system/psys) support. Work on this is under way. I've recently send out v2 of the patch-series for this.
- Firefox pipewire camera support and support for the camera portal to get permission to access the camera. My colleague Jan Grulich has been working on this, see Jan's blogpost. Jan's work has landed in the just released Firefox 122.
Status
Date: 2024-04-17 04:56 pm (UTC)It's a bit difficult finding out what the state is now, now as we're at kernel 6.8. I have a dell XPS 9320 with a ov01a10 sensor in it - do you know if that will be one of the sensors which might be supported by this open source stack?
I've been running ipu6-drivers for a while, but I find it more and more difficult to keep up with building the drivers for newer kernels. For instance, how do I figure out when to use upstream drivers, and when to use drivers from the ivsc/ipu6 repos?
Looking forward to the day I don't have to think about the ipu6-drivers repo at all...
Re: Status
Date: 2024-04-17 07:05 pm (UTC)The XPS 9320 likely has a iVSC chip involved in the camera pipeline which makes things a bit more complicated and means that currently the FOSS stack from this blog-post does not work.
Work is under way to make things work with laptops with an iVSC chip too. But I'm afraid I cannot really give an ETA for when this will land.
Regards,
Hans
Re: Status
Date: 2024-04-19 12:26 pm (UTC)I hope you create another blog post when there's news for those computers too, not that easy to catch what the upstream status is with these drivers.
Re: Status
Date: 2024-05-02 09:09 pm (UTC)Sorry for my lack of knowledge, but I'm curious -- is it possible for you to take a peek into those drivers? How is it possible that camera is working on Ubuntu relatively fine (lower res and fps), but it's hard, or even impossible, to make it working on other distros?