Reuse iPhone image sensors (camera only, without the whole phone)

[RoGeorge]

- Is there any easy way or IC that can read images from an iPhone camera chip?



- What is the component in the left side of the pic, the one with the 2mm metallic tube attached, is that a microphone?  On the back of it's metal can it's written NE 2820, and it's on the same black ribbon together with what looks like a ToF (time of flight optical range sensor, or maybe an infrared RxTx sensor for IrDA  ) and something else that might be a light sensor.

More pix in the link, with the can and tube on the lower side.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proximity-Sensor-821-1465-Camera-iPhone/dp/B00CKSYC7W
https://www.amazon.co.uk/821-1465-Light-Sensor-Cable-iPhone/dp/B00PUTXIFU

[RoGeorge]

More pics of the unknown component:







Looking through the metallic tube, inside it looks like there is a diagonal wire in the tube, in front of the chip, or maybe it is just a speck of dust?



It's from an iPhone.  For more clues see the links from the previous post.

Anybody know what sensor is that, please?

[Echo88]

Can you tell from which iphone the components come? Maybe they correctly identified the component on an ifixit-teardown.

[RoGeorge]

I'm not familiar with iPhones.  Don't know if that part is specific to many models, but this is the exact part, so most probably iPhone 5.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proximity-Sensor-821-1465-Camera-iPhone/dp/B00CKSYC7W
https://www.amazon.co.uk/821-1465-Light-Sensor-Cable-iPhone/dp/B00PUTXIFU

How does this help finding what that sensor senses?  I'm not looking for a replacement, just curious to learn what is that because I never seen such a part.

[amyk]

Camera will almost certainly be MIPI CSI. If you can figure out the pinout and matching connector (schematics can be found) then there are lots of compatible interface ICs.

[RoGeorge]

I've looked for the schematics of iPhone 5, and there are 4 differential data lanes and another one for clock, plus some i2c control signals and 4 distinct supply voltages:  1.2V, 1.8V, 2.5V and 2.8V.



Also found a nice reverse engineering video from mikeselectricstuff that might apply

Interfacing a cheap phone camera module to a PIC32 microcontroller


Rear (main) camera specs of iPhone 5 is 8MP for still photos, and 1080p/30Hz when filming, so nothing spectacular than any other ordinary nowadays webcam, except maybe the autofocus.  Given the price of the other components around the image sensor, I guess it doesn't worth the effort and the money, butt I never had an iPhone, so I might be wrong.

Are there any spectacular performance of a, let's say, iPhone 5 camera when compared with a normal webcam, so it will worth the effort of reverse engineering and reuse those sensors alone, without the whole iPhone?

[amyk]

Yes, that's definitely MIPI CSI.

You can look at reviews and other places where photos taken with that camera can be found for an example of its performance. Being a phone camera means it will more likely be designed for a higher dynamic range and focal distance than a webcam.

[Rerouter]

From memory webcam modules tend to be jpeg frames with not much control over how the compression is handled, but phone camera modules allow for other modes including raw frames, and higher frame rates by only sampling a smaller region of the sensor.

[RoGeorge]

A nice video about phone cameras and their optics, there might be 4 lens in there!   

[RoGeorge]

Just found out Vivado 2020.1 has MIPI DSI (display serial interface) and CSI (camera serial interface) for free to use as an IP for Xilinx FPGAs:
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/09/xilinx-makes-mipi-csi-and-dsi-controller-ip-blocks-free-to-use-with-vivado/

Another MIPI reverse engineering link from mikeselectricstuff, this time about about MIPI DSI:
Reverse Engineering the iPod Nano 6 LCD interface

[rajhlinux]

I also have the same question.

I wonder how I can reuse the iPhone 6S camera, not to mention you can buy these cameras for less than $5 and are high quality sensors.

I found many SoC ICs which can do Realtime 4K HEVC encoding such chips from "Lumissil" which also have dedicated Image Signal Processors and the have many interfaces like MIPI CSI-2.

Have anyone was able to easily "plug and play" iPhone camera sensors to common camera standards interfaces such as MIPI CSI-2 or what not?

Does Apple requires us to do reverse engineering for interfacing and dumping RAW camera data to the encoder IC?

I rather use Android phones which have quality Camera sensors which should also be around $5 or so but best of all, most likely do not require us to do reverse engineering and simply "plug and play" interfaced to the encoder SoC IC.

[rajhlinux]

Camera will almost certainly be MIPI CSI. If you can figure out the pinout and matching connector (schematics can be found) then there are lots of compatible interface ICs.

Interesting, I would need to look at the PCB schematic of the phone's motherboard to determine the pinout of the sensor cable.
That would be kinda odd and tricky.

I wonder if there are any schematics just for the iPhone camera sensors without needing to mirror the pinouts from motherboard PCB pinouts to the actual camera Sensor cable ribbon or what not.

[RoGeorge]

The schematic part of the pinout is attached a few messages above.  It's a MIPI camera.  The entire phone schematics are easy to find online.