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As the title states; are there any microcontrollers that support MIPI-CSI2 on the market?

I know product recommendations are not allowed as part of the stack exchange so I will clarify a little further; if there are no MCU's that have MIPI-CSI2 communication interface (besides the soon-to-be released ESP32-P4 that I can find), I would like to understand the bottle neck?

Many SoMs and MPUs have this capability, but not many, if any, MCUs do. Is this because they need large supporting electronics such as RAM, or a dedicated DSP?

My application requires a single 4K frame to be captured, I do not need to record, nor have a processing time frame requirement and much of the information online as we have flowed into machine vision is now tailored toward the video capture market (e.g. This chip is capable of 1080p 30fps!). Does this mean this chip would be capable of a single 4K frame?

Appreciate any insight into the limitations and considerations of hardware so I am able to narrow my search to an ideal part. I don't want to run a whole MPU to capture a single frame every hour.

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The NXP IMXRT117x Microcontroller with an ARM M7 @ M4F CPU running simple RTOS like FreeRTOS or Zephyr or barebone C has a 2-lane MIPI CSI2 camera interface if you don't want to use a Microprocessor running Linux, etc.

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Sorry if my contribution is too basic - my background is software rather than microcontrollers so I apologise for my lack of knowledge.

I'm looking for the same thing for an unpaid research program - a microcontroller () that supports .

One option I'm looking at is the "New 1 GHz SAMA7G54 is the First Single-Core MPU with MIPI CSI-2 Camera Interface" which Antonio and Russell mentioned above and was launched in 2022.

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/about/news-releases/products/new-1ghz-sama7g54-is-the-first-single-core-mpu-with-mipi-csi-2

One workaround for microcontrollers that don't support CSI-2 may be that some cameras support - I2C fast mode or I2C fast-mode plus - I don't know if these can reach the same transmission rates as CSI-2 though nor how well supported they are and careful design can be needed to avoid problems with interference in I2C busses.

This 2023 ST application note on says

"STM32MP15x Series interfacing with a MIPI® CSI-2 camera" says that "it is possible to extend the range of addressable camera sensors for instance MIPI® CSI-2 cameras (camera serial interface), thanks to the STMIPID02 MIPI CSI-2 deserializer discrete component"

I haven't tried this though.

https://www.st.com/resource/en/application_note/dm00693021-stm32mp15x-series-interfacing-with-a-mipi-csi2-camera-stmicroelectronics.pdf

The Analog Devices data sheet dated 2022 states "Multiple high-speed and low-power communications interfaces are supported, including I2S, MIPI® CSI-2® serial camera"

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/MAX78002.pdf

This field is rapidly changing so I've included dates in the above.

At the moment the plan is to use the the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 (Sony ) with a Raspberry Pi SBC however the power consumption of SBCs is significantly higher than microcontrollers and I haven't found any SBC that can rapidly wake from a low power sleep mode in the way that some microcontrollers can.

https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/camera/camera-module-3-product-brief.pdf

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  • \$\begingroup\$ W.r.t. the mention of some cameras support [tag:I2C fast mode] or [tag:I2C fast-mode plus], do those cameras allow the I2C interface to transfer the image data, or is I2C used to only configure the camera (with CSI-2 still used to transfer the image data)? \$\endgroup\$
    – Chester Gillon
    Commented May 12 at 11:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ChesterGillon My understanding from the data sheet is that the Sony imx708 supports I2C fast mode and fast-mode plus for image data and I2C for focus control but my knowledge of this is limited so I may have misinterpreted it: >CSI-2 serial data output •> 2-wire serial communication (supports I2C fast mode and fast-mode plus) >• 2-wire serial control of focus mechanism datasheets.raspberrypi.com/camera/… \$\endgroup\$
    – Will Robertson
    Commented May 12 at 11:09
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ChesterGillon I'm cautious about some of the specialist considerations that may have to be taken into account when trying to push I2C to its limits though and I'd rather avoid this if possible... \$\endgroup\$
    – Will Robertson
    Commented May 12 at 11:21

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