CSI2 drivers for RK35xx?

[Michal Fita]

I believe this question goes to @rpardini as maintainer of patches for Rockchip series in the `build` repo:

 

I'm trying connect camera to Orange Pi 3B (yes, it boots from community support on edge kernels), but spent 2h digging to find no drivers for CSI2 from Rockchip's fork are ported to patches for recent kernels (for example: https://github.com/armbian/linux-rockchip/blob/rk-5.10-rkr6/drivers/phy/rockchip/phy-rockchip-csi2-dphy.c and corresponding device trees to instantiate these drivers).

 

This is a little chicken egg problem as I need recent kernels to have access to open source GPU drivers - they're not present on 5.10 based original system images for OrangePi 3B.

 

I created a DT overlay for imx219 camera, but it cannot work as right references don't exist on Armbian yet.

 

I could help with porting these, but I need to know the procedure - that's some amount of drivers I can figure out based on `compatible = ` entries from Rockchip's device trees. I probably need to get them built with 6.6 and 6.7, then generate patches with these and PR changes. Any more hints appreciated.

I'm interested in having both MIPI CSI2 and GPU working on these boards for now:

• OrangePi 3B (that one I have on my desk)
• Radxa Zero 3E
• Radxa Zero 3W

 

Thank you.

 

How you can live with forum not supporting humanly Markdown?

[SteeMan]

I think your real question is why hasn't Rockchip put in the effort to get these drivers into mainline linux?  It isn't the goal of Armbian to be the repository of large amounts of unmaintained code.  The goal is really to bring mainline linux to devices.  But that assumes that everyone else is working to bring various bits and pieces from custom linux forks to mainline linux.  While sometimes it is necessary to temporarily host code that has been ported to mainline, but not yet incorporated upstream, most of the efforts should be to get the code into upstream mainline linux.

 

[Michal Fita]

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While sometimes it is necessary to temporarily host code that has been ported to mainline, but not yet incorporated upstream, most of the efforts should be to get the code into upstream mainline linux.

 

Whoa. I'm not representing Rockchip in anyway - just need to use RK3566 in a project. Without these drivers the support for the chip is incomplete from the perspective of the Armbian user. I don't have powers, energy and money to push particular chip drivers into mainline - there are several vendors our there who don't have theirs and Ubuntu still doing distros for these (👀 Xilinx/AMD).

 

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It isn't the goal of Armbian to be the repository of large amounts of unmaintained code.

 

If that's the case what's the usefulness of Armbian for average tinkerer who want to run Rockchip based SBC with CSI-2 cameras? In Windows world you take the installer and add drivers to the system - in Linux world at best someone could cook DKMS package with extra set, but that's at the moment probably significantly more effort than set of patches for Armbian's build.
 

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I think your real question is why hasn't Rockchip put in the effort to get these drivers into mainline linux?

 

Money, money, money. SBC makers doesn't pay them enough to justify effort required and they probably deliver customized kernels as part of paid support to they customers under NDAs. These things happen probably in violation of GPL license, but no one is willing to pay layers to chase this especially as 5.10 is out to the world.

 

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It isn't the goal of Armbian to be the repository of large amounts of unmaintained code.

 

I don't have to PR my changes if you don't like such approach. That, however, doesn't change my need to do this as I need to boot the board with CSI-2 support and working GPU 🤷