Introduction
This is part 3 of a series of blog posts about a cheap HI3518 based camera module. In part 1, I showed how to build a custom image for the module. In part 2, I fixed a bug that was preventing the Ethernet from working. This part covers capturing an image.Once I had built a custom image and got the Ethernet working I was ready to compile the HI3518 sample programs that are available in the SDK. To make this easier I set up an NFS share on my development computer and had the camera module automatically mount the share on boot up. This removed the need to include the programs in the image and so removed the need to build a new image each time I wanted to test a change to the programs, or the need to be constantly copying files around.
I was under the impression that the camera module I had contained an AR0130 image sensor. This is what the listing said, but it was also what the camera module reported in its boot logs. This however turned out not to be the case. I tried compiling the sample programs to target the AR0130 but could not get them to work. After a lot of playing around wondering what I was doing wrong I realised that the camera module I have actually contains an SC1035, which has a similar specification to the AR0130 but is not a drop in replacement. And, unfortunately the SDK did not include code for the SC1035.
The image below shows how you can distinguish between the two image sensors by looking at the layout of the contacts.
Comparison of the layout of the contacts of the AR0130 (left) and SC1035 (right)
