FX3 LVDS Frame grabber
![16bit LVDS FX3 Framegrabber PCB with SuperSpeed Explorer Kit mounted on top](featured-IMG_4028.jpg)
What is it?
The 16bit-LVDS-FX3-Framegrabber is a Cypress FX3 SuperSpeed Explorer Kit-based PCB, which can digitize a parallel 16bit digital video stream from a commercial image sensor. It exposes a USB 3.0 UVC (“webcam”) device to the operating system.
Video signal is accepted on a 50pin SCSI-II connector as parallel LVDS.
Required signals:
- DATA_VALID
- HSYNC
- VSYNC
- PIXCLK
- DATA0 through DATA15
The framegrabber follows the common industry standard pinout for 16bit digital LVDS video.
The current state of the firmware/GPIF II configuration is fixed to 1024x1024px, 16bit dynamic range.
Hardware
![Plain 16bit LVDS FX3 Framegrabber PCB](IMG_4024.jpg)
![Framegrabber PCB backside](IMG_4025.jpg)
USB Video Class / “Webcam”-mode
Due to limitations in USB UVC descriptor/color format support, this firmware reports itself to the OS as a YUYV/YUV2 device, in other words a 16bit per pixel color video signal. This will create wrong color images when viewed on regular software (like VLC Media Player), the raw stream can be viewed & interpreted using Video4Linux, GStreamer, etc. though.
# v4l2-ctl -d 0 --list-formats-ext
ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
Type: Video Capture
[0]: 'YUYV' (YUYV 4:2:2)
Size: Discrete 1024x1024
Interval: Discrete 0.200s (5.000 fps)
GPIF II logic
![GPIF II Designer screenshot](Screenshot 2025-01-04 203753.png)