Boson 640 MIPI M0153 16-bit

mkriesel

Re: Boson 640 MIPI M0153: 16-bit Pre-AGC

Hello, I saw this post and I'm in a similar boat where I'm looking at using a boson over mipi. Is there any update that has been done or is planned with supporting 16 bit mipi and possibly 60 hz update (less important but would still be nice)?

Alex Kushleyev

@mkriesel , we were able to get the 14 bit data from Boson after performing a firmware update on our old Hadron unit.

Enabling this will require updated voxl-camera-server, a new Boson sensormodule file as well as a change in the Boson configuration.

We were not able to use the FLIR GUI to switch Boson to 14bit MIPI, but using their python API, we were able to do it over USB (while connected to a linux PC).

While outputting 14 bit data, which is RAW output from the sensor, you cannot simultaneously get the post AGC 8 bit data, so you would need to do your own processing on the 14 bit data.

Our plan is to enable the RAW data publishing first along with perhaps a simple post-processed version of the data. The data will be published in uint16 format, so that you won't have to do the 14->16 bit unpacking.

Here are the Boson versions that worked / did not work to enable 14 bit MIPI data.

Hadron (640x512)
Before update: Software Version 3 0 26416 (not able to switch to 14 bit mode via gui/ python api)
After update: Software Version: 4 1 27660 (able to switch to 14 bit mode via python api and get data on voxl2)

Small Boson (320x256):
Software Version: 4 0 27141 (able to switch to 14 bit mode via python api and get data on voxl2)

Update is coming probably next week.

Regarding the 60Hz, actually we made some improvements in camera server a while ago and 60Hz is working now. You can just update your Boson FPS using the GUI and try it. You should update the FPS in voxl-camera-server.conf to 60 as well, so that if you are using the encoded output, the encoder knows what FPS to expect (remember, the camera server cannot actually change the FPS of the Boson).

Finally, we were previously using the ISP to process the Boson data, which made the image look a bit worse. Please make sure to use MISP when testing boson and disable the small / large encoded streams.

Here is a sample config:

{
			"type":	"boson",
			"name":	"boson640",
			"enabled":	true,
			"camera_id":	2,
			"fps":	30,
			"en_preview":	true,
			"en_raw_preview":	true,
			"en_misp":	true,
			"preview_width":	640,
			"preview_height":	512,
			"en_snapshot":	false,
			"ae_mode":	"off",
			"en_rotate":	false,			
			"misp_width":	640,
			"misp_height":	512,
			"misp_venc_enable":	true,
			"misp_venc_mode":	"h264",
			"misp_venc_br_ctrl":	"cqp",
			"misp_venc_Qfixed":	30,
			"misp_venc_Qmin":	15,
			"misp_venc_Qmax":	50,
			"misp_venc_nPframes":	29,
			"misp_venc_mbps":	2,
			"misp_venc_osd":	false
		}

In order to use MISP for boson, you need to have the camera server which includes the following commits: -- see here : https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/commits/master?ref_type=heads

By the way, there is now also a Boson color stream (heat map) which is generated from the original 8 bit post AGC image. You can see an example in this forum thread : https://forum.modalai.com/topic/4757/connecting-2-boson-cameras-and-2-mipi-cameras-4-cameras-total (where there are two bosons, both running at 60fps, by the way)

Alex

mkriesel

@Alex-Kushleyev I only need the RAW output I plan to do all the post processing myself so this is exactly what I need, Thanks!