Changing OmniVision sensor on RPi Camera

[Sandu]

Hello,
Did anyone changed the sensor from the RPi Cam board?

I will need a larger size sensor, and looking to the OmniVision camera sensors specs most are having same power input design (core 1.5V, analog 2.8V, pin connection to the board...) for larger sizes.

Basically, just scrap the $ 5 sensor with the black lens plastic casing, and place a larger sensor, but not sure if the board supports that?
of couse you need some attention with pins connection and reconnect to the P5V04a SUNNY A1346 tiny connector, but I think is Possible.
Advise is welcomed.

Technical data RPi:
http://elinux.org/Rpi_Camera_Module

Omnivision Sensors Technical Data:
http://www.ovt.com/products/category.php?id=11

Particular OV5648 (not OV5647, that i belive is the same, but for RPi)
http://www.ovt.com/download_document.ph ... nsorid=178
and can the RPi board support this 23 Megapixels with same power supply and pins?
http://www.ovt.com/download_document.ph ... nsorid=170

[6by9]

Did you bother searching for any of the numerous threads about this?

The driver for the OV5647 is built into the GPU firmware blob, as is the tuning data for it. There is no support for other sensors in the firmware.

You can get access to the raw data received on the CSI-2 bus - see viewtopic.php?f=43&t=109137

If you use that route, it is not possible to access the Imaging Sensor Pipeline (ISP) hardware, so you get raw data in whatever format the sensor throws out - probably Bayer. You will also have to rely on the sensor to have AGC and AWB control loops, or write your own having gathered suitable statistics from the image.
You will also have to analyse the sensor datasheet or otherwise determine the correct register values to get the sensor to stream data in the format you want - this is not an easy task.

Hardware-wise, any sensor that has a CSI-2 interface can probably be made to work. CSI-2 is scalable by having a number of 1Gb/s lanes, and the Pi A/A+/B/B+/B2 only expose 2 lanes. The Compute Module does expose all 4 lanes that the SoC supports on one of the two interfaces. 2 lanes is going to limit the maximum resolution and framerate that can be achieved, but if you're having to do significant image processing anyway then that is the least of your worries.

[Sandu]

Thanks for the link.
No, I did not know about the thread, definitivelly helps ( known now the issues and limitations).

[6by9]

I'd meant threads such as
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=35442&p=658593
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=32455&p=533951
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=24660
all asking if this that or other sensor can be attached.
A lot of them are from before May, so access to the raw data was not possible, so the answers in some cases are a little wrong now, but it is still far from a trivial task.

I can say that I know that the interface works with another imaging device (I can't say what), but that has all that AGC and AWB control contained within the imaging device and it just takes YUYV data into memory for manipulation by the Pi (JPEG encode mainly).