VOXL2 IMX214(M0025) Not Working When Connected To MIPI Extension Cable

[John Nomikos 0]

Good afternoon,

Recently I've made a voxl-camera-server configuration that allows Dual Hires (IMX214 + IMX617), Tracking, and TOF to be connected all at once. I managed to get this configuration to work. Every camera was behaving nicely and they all showed up on voxl-portal.

However, once I connected the IMX214 to a MIPI extension cable, it would not get frames on voxl-portal.

I am not exactly sure why that is. There were no errors being displayed on voxl-camera-server even when debug flag was enabled. And voxl-camera-server ran fine. I could select the hires tab for imx214, but nothing would show.

voxl-inspect-cam -a shows this:

|            Pipe Name |  bytes  | wide |  hgt |exp(ms)| gain | frame id |latency(ms)|  fps |  mbps  | format
|   hires2_large_color | 4718592 | 2048 | 1536 |  7.99 |  108 |      921 |     55.6  | 30.0 | 1132.5 | NV12
| hires2_large_encoded |    4597 | 2048 | 1536 |  7.99 |  108 |      921 |     58.3  | 30.0 |    0.6 | H265 (P)   
|    hires2_large_grey | 3145728 | 2048 | 1536 |  7.99 |  108 |      921 |     53.3  | 30.0 |  755.0 | RAW8
|   hires2_small_color | 1179648 | 1024 |  768 |  7.99 |  108 |      922 |     49.3  | 30.0 |  283.1 | NV12
| hires2_small_encoded |    4009 | 1024 |  768 |  7.99 |  108 |      922 |     48.2  | 30.0 |    0.7 | H265 (P)   
|    hires2_small_grey |  786432 | 1024 |  768 |  7.99 |  108 |      922 |     47.8  | 30.0 |  188.7 | RAW8
|      hires2_snapshot |
|    hires_large_color |
|  hires_large_encoded |
|     hires_large_grey |
|    hires_small_color |
|  hires_small_encoded |
|     hires_small_grey |
|       hires_snapshot |
|             tof_conf |   38528 |  224 |  172 |  0.00 |    0 |      207 |     45.6  |  5.0 |    1.5 | RAW8
|            tof_depth |   38528 |  224 |  172 |  0.00 |    0 |      207 |     45.4  |  5.0 |    1.5 | RAW8
|               tof_ir |   38528 |  224 |  172 |  0.00 |    0 |      207 |     44.8  |  5.0 |    1.5 | RAW8
|             tracking |  307200 |  640 |  480 |  4.69 |   98 |     1240 |     11.3  | 30.0 |   73.7 | RAW8

Whenever this happened, the hires2 camera (IMX678) stream would freeze up when viewing it on the portal. This would not happen when IMX214 worked though. I tried this with both the MODALAI INC FPC-M0036 CAMERA EXTENSION CABLE and the MODALAI 60MM CAMERA EXTENSION FLEX cable. I had multiple of both of these.

After some troubleshooting, I connected the hires back to the board (like the second time I did that), and I noticed something strange. Now the IMX214 hires camera's frames do not show on the board even without the extension cable, and the camera will get to finger-burning temperatures in less than 2 minutes after being on. It appears that the camera has bricked. Not sure if it was it being connected to the extension cable that caused it. Could have been faulty before I started trying to get it to work.

[Chad Sweet]

The connectors on the image sensor modules have limited insertions, like 10-20. It seems like the connector itself is likely damaged. Sometimes you can see a bent pin under a microscope

[John Nomikos 0]

@Chad-Sweet You are correct. Swapped the IMX214 for a different one and it worked. Thank you for the help!