Unicam is exactly the same as the CFE, which is why they share the sensor drivers (as do all other standard CSI2 receivers with mainline Linux support).The main downside of those existing devices is either price or need to develop your own HW supporting it. Also, one of my main use-cases for this setup will be to use it in conjunction with camera SerDes like FPD-Link or GMSL, with one of the ideas to have a single configurable HW driver, so you won't need to develop new one for each sensor or other supporting ICs (I believe it would be something akin to unicam driver).
Linux is designed to have each module do one thing, and (hopefully) do it well. Mega-monolithic blobs are not the Linux approach.
There are already GMSL and FPD-Link drivers in https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/tr ... /media/i2c. You use Device Tree to connect up the blocks as required, and the Media Controller API to configure the links.
I haven't tried it for a while, but https://github.com/6by9/linux/tree/rpi-6.12.y-fpdlink was testing the Arducam V3Link boards (hacked to remove their microcontroller so the kernel can talk to the V3Link chips) and IMX219 (Pi V2 cameras).
Statistics: Posted by 6by9 — Thu Mar 06, 2025 3:39 pm