how to use ipu3-cio camera in linux

Question

I have a Thinkpad X1 Tablet (gen 2) with a front and back integrated camera running Ubuntu 19:10. The cameras appear to be detected:

$ v4l-info

v4l2 device info [/dev/video0] ###

general info VIDIOC_QUERYCAP driver : "ipu3-cio2" card : "Intel IPU3 CIO2" bus_info : "PCI:0000:00:14.3" version : 5.3.18 capabilities : 0x84201000 [?,?,STREAMING,(null)]

standards

inputs VIDIOC_ENUMINPUT(0) index : 0 name : "camera" type : CAMERA audioset : 0 tuner : 0 std : 0x0 [] status : 0x0 []

controls

When I start cheese I have 4 cameras labeled "ipu3-imgu". When I run guvcview I have 10 devices labeled "ipu3-imgu" which the system puts at /dev/video0-9 and four devices labeled "Intel IPU3 CIO2" which are /dev/video10-13.

But none of these work. Does anyone have a laptop with this kind of camera running Linux?

Does anyone know of a resource on debugging this kind of camera in Linux?

Answer 1

To support the camera on this device you will need to use libcamera.

However you will likely also need specific sensor driver updates in your kernel, and updates to the CIO2 bridge that have been developed as part of supporting the Microsoft Surface range of devices.

See https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Camera-Support and https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/issues/91