Add a CSI Camera as a Modular Resource

Many boards, like the Jetson Orin Nano, come with the option to use Camera Serial Interface (CSI) cameras, like these cameras from E-con Systems or this camera from Seed Technologies. These cameras are excellent for utilizing embedded vision systems like Viam’s vision service. Not all CSI cameras are supported by the webcam camera model. Instead, Viam supports CSI cameras by providing a modular resource for your CSI camera: viam:camera:csi.

This module includes a simple wrapper around GStreamer and a control interface for the control tab of the Viam app so you can utilize the hardware accelerated GST plugins and use the embedded CSI cameras on your jetson boards with Viam.

The module is open-sourced and available on GitHub.

To use the CSI camera module, follow the installation and configuration steps.

Installation

On your robot’s computer, download the viam:camera:csi appimage and make it executable:

sudo wget https://github.com/seanavery/viam-csi/releases/download/v0.0.2/viam-csi-0.0.2-aarch64.AppImage -O /usr/local/bin/viam-csi
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/viam-csi

Configuration

Navigate to the Config tab of your robot’s page in the Viam app.

Click on the Modules subtab and navigate to the Local section. Enter a name, for example my_csi_cam_module_name, then enter the executable path. If you used the above install command, the executable path should be: /usr/local/bin/viam-csi. Then click Add module.

Click on the Components subtab and click Create component. Select the local modular resource type. Then select camera as the type, enter the triplet viam:camera:csi, and give your resource a name, for example my_test_csi_cam. Click Create.

On the new component panel, copy and paste the following JSON object into the attributes field:

{
    "width_px": <int>,
    "height_px": <int>,
    "frame_rate": <int>,
    "debug": "<boolean>"
}

Go to your robot’s page on the Viam app. Navigate to the Config tab on your robot’s page and select Raw JSON mode.

Copy and paste the JSON object for the module into the modules array to add Viam’s csi-mr module:

{
  "executable_path": "</usr/local/bin/viam-csi>",
  "name": "<your-csi-cam-module-name>",
  "type": "local"
}

Next, add the following JSON object to your components array to configure a csi camera component with the name my_test_csi_cam:

{
    "model": "viam:camera:csi",
    "attributes": {
      "width_px": <int>,
      "height_px": <int>,
      "frame_rate": <int>,
      "debug": "<boolean>"
    },
    "depends_on": [],
    "name": "<your-csi-cam-name>",
    "namespace": "rdk",
    "type": "camera"
}

{
  "modules": [
    {
      "executable_path": "/usr/bin/csi-mr",
      "name": "csi_cam_module",
      "type": "local"
    }
  ],
  "components": [
    {
      "model": "viam:camera:csi",
      "attributes": {
        "width_px": 1920,
        "height_px": 1080,
        "frame_rate": 30,
        "debug": true
      },
      "depends_on": [],
      "name": "my_test_csi_cam",
      "namespace": "rdk",
      "type": "camera"
    }
  ]
}

For more information, see installing local modules.

Edit and fill in the attributes to configure your component.

The following attributes are available for the viam:camera:csi model:

NameTypeInclusionDescription
width_pxintOptionalWidth of the image this camera captures in pixels.
Default: 1920
height_pxintOptionalHeight of the image this camera captures in pixels.
Default: 1080
frame_rateintOptionalThe image capture frame rate this camera should use.
Default: 30
video_pathstringOptionalThe filepath to the input sensor of this camera on your board. If none is given, your robot will attempt to detect the video path automatically.
Default: "0"
debugbooleanOptionalWhether or not you want debug input from this camera in your robot’s logs.
Default: false

Then, save the config.

Check the Logs tab of your robot in the Viam app to make sure your camera has connected and no errors are being raised.

For more information, see installing local modules.



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