| .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 | |
| The Linux USB Video Class (UVC) driver | |
| ====================================== | |
| This file documents some driver-specific aspects of the UVC driver, such as | |
| driver-specific ioctls and implementation notes. | |
| Questions and remarks can be sent to the Linux UVC development mailing list at | |
| linux-media@vger.kernel.org. | |
| Extension Unit (XU) support | |
| --------------------------- | |
| Introduction | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| The UVC specification allows for vendor-specific extensions through extension | |
| units (XUs). The Linux UVC driver supports extension unit controls (XU controls) | |
| through two separate mechanisms: | |
| - through mappings of XU controls to V4L2 controls | |
| - through a driver-specific ioctl interface | |
| The first one allows generic V4L2 applications to use XU controls by mapping | |
| certain XU controls onto V4L2 controls, which then show up during ordinary | |
| control enumeration. | |
| The second mechanism requires uvcvideo-specific knowledge for the application to | |
| access XU controls but exposes the entire UVC XU concept to user space for | |
| maximum flexibility. | |
| Both mechanisms complement each other and are described in more detail below. | |
| Control mappings | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| The UVC driver provides an API for user space applications to define so-called | |
| control mappings at runtime. These allow for individual XU controls or byte | |
| ranges thereof to be mapped to new V4L2 controls. Such controls appear and | |
| function exactly like normal V4L2 controls (i.e. the stock controls, such as | |
| brightness, contrast, etc.). However, reading or writing of such a V4L2 controls | |
| triggers a read or write of the associated XU control. | |
| The ioctl used to create these control mappings is called UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP. | |
| Previous driver versions (before 0.2.0) required another ioctl to be used | |
| beforehand (UVCIOC_CTRL_ADD) to pass XU control information to the UVC driver. | |
| This is no longer necessary as newer uvcvideo versions query the information | |
| directly from the device. | |
| For details on the UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP ioctl please refer to the section titled | |
| "IOCTL reference" below. | |
| 3. Driver specific XU control interface | |
| For applications that need to access XU controls directly, e.g. for testing | |
| purposes, firmware upload, or accessing binary controls, a second mechanism to | |
| access XU controls is provided in the form of a driver-specific ioctl, namely | |
| UVCIOC_CTRL_QUERY. | |
| A call to this ioctl allows applications to send queries to the UVC driver that | |
| directly map to the low-level UVC control requests. | |
| In order to make such a request the UVC unit ID of the control's extension unit | |
| and the control selector need to be known. This information either needs to be | |
| hardcoded in the application or queried using other ways such as by parsing the | |
| UVC descriptor or, if available, using the media controller API to enumerate a | |
| device's entities. | |
| Unless the control size is already known it is necessary to first make a | |
| UVC_GET_LEN requests in order to be able to allocate a sufficiently large buffer | |
| and set the buffer size to the correct value. Similarly, to find out whether | |
| UVC_GET_CUR or UVC_SET_CUR are valid requests for a given control, a | |
| UVC_GET_INFO request should be made. The bits 0 (GET supported) and 1 (SET | |
| supported) of the resulting byte indicate which requests are valid. | |
| With the addition of the UVCIOC_CTRL_QUERY ioctl the UVCIOC_CTRL_GET and | |
| UVCIOC_CTRL_SET ioctls have become obsolete since their functionality is a | |
| subset of the former ioctl. For the time being they are still supported but | |
| application developers are encouraged to use UVCIOC_CTRL_QUERY instead. | |
| For details on the UVCIOC_CTRL_QUERY ioctl please refer to the section titled | |
| "IOCTL reference" below. | |
| Security | |
| ~~~~~~~~ | |
| The API doesn't currently provide a fine-grained access control facility. The | |
| UVCIOC_CTRL_ADD and UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP ioctls require super user permissions. | |
| Suggestions on how to improve this are welcome. | |
| Debugging | |
| ~~~~~~~~~ | |
| In order to debug problems related to XU controls or controls in general it is | |
| recommended to enable the UVC_TRACE_CONTROL bit in the module parameter 'trace'. | |
| This causes extra output to be written into the system log. | |
| IOCTL reference | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| UVCIOC_CTRL_MAP - Map a UVC control to a V4L2 control | |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | |
| **This IOCTL is deprecated and will be eventually removed** | |
| Argument: struct uvc_xu_control_mapping | |
| **Description**: | |
| This ioctl creates a mapping between a UVC control or part of a UVC | |
| control and a V4L2 control. Once mappings are defined, userspace | |
| applications can access vendor-defined UVC control through the V4L2 | |
| control API. | |
| To create a mapping, applications fill the uvc_xu_control_mapping | |
| structure with information about an existing UVC control defined with | |
| UVCIOC_CTRL_ADD and a new V4L2 control. | |
| A UVC control can be mapped to several V4L2 controls. For instance, | |
| a UVC pan/tilt control could be mapped to separate pan and tilt V4L2 | |
| controls. The UVC control is divided into non overlapping fields using | |
| the 'size' and 'offset' fields and are then independently mapped to | |
| V4L2 control. | |
| For signed integer V4L2 controls the data_type field should be set to | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_SIGNED. Other values are currently ignored. | |
| **Return value**: | |
| On success 0 is returned. On error -1 is returned and errno is set | |
| appropriately. | |
| ENOMEM | |
| Not enough memory to perform the operation. | |
| EPERM | |
| Insufficient privileges (super user privileges are required). | |
| EINVAL | |
| No such UVC control. | |
| EOVERFLOW | |
| The requested offset and size would overflow the UVC control. | |
| EEXIST | |
| Mapping already exists. | |
| **Data types**: | |
| .. code-block:: none | |
| * struct uvc_xu_control_mapping | |
| __u32 id V4L2 control identifier | |
| __u8 name[32] V4L2 control name | |
| __u8 entity[16] UVC extension unit GUID | |
| __u8 selector UVC control selector | |
| __u8 size V4L2 control size (in bits) | |
| __u8 offset V4L2 control offset (in bits) | |
| enum v4l2_ctrl_type | |
| v4l2_type V4L2 control type | |
| enum uvc_control_data_type | |
| data_type UVC control data type | |
| struct uvc_menu_info | |
| *menu_info Array of menu entries (for menu controls only) | |
| __u32 menu_count Number of menu entries (for menu controls only) | |
| * struct uvc_menu_info | |
| __u32 value Menu entry value used by the device | |
| __u8 name[32] Menu entry name | |
| * enum uvc_control_data_type | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_RAW Raw control (byte array) | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_SIGNED Signed integer | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_UNSIGNED Unsigned integer | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_BOOLEAN Boolean | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_ENUM Enumeration | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_BITMASK Bitmask | |
| UVC_CTRL_DATA_TYPE_RECT Rectangular area | |
| UVCIOC_CTRL_QUERY - Query a UVC XU control | |
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | |
| Argument: struct uvc_xu_control_query | |
| **Description**: | |
| This ioctl queries a UVC XU control identified by its extension unit ID | |
| and control selector. | |
| There are a number of different queries available that closely | |
| correspond to the low-level control requests described in the UVC | |
| specification. These requests are: | |
| UVC_GET_CUR | |
| Obtain the current value of the control. | |
| UVC_GET_MIN | |
| Obtain the minimum value of the control. | |
| UVC_GET_MAX | |
| Obtain the maximum value of the control. | |
| UVC_GET_DEF | |
| Obtain the default value of the control. | |
| UVC_GET_RES | |
| Query the resolution of the control, i.e. the step size of the | |
| allowed control values. | |
| UVC_GET_LEN | |
| Query the size of the control in bytes. | |
| UVC_GET_INFO | |
| Query the control information bitmap, which indicates whether | |
| get/set requests are supported. | |
| UVC_SET_CUR | |
| Update the value of the control. | |
| Applications must set the 'size' field to the correct length for the | |
| control. Exceptions are the UVC_GET_LEN and UVC_GET_INFO queries, for | |
| which the size must be set to 2 and 1, respectively. The 'data' field | |
| must point to a valid writable buffer big enough to hold the indicated | |
| number of data bytes. | |
| Data is copied directly from the device without any driver-side | |
| processing. Applications are responsible for data buffer formatting, | |
| including little-endian/big-endian conversion. This is particularly | |
| important for the result of the UVC_GET_LEN requests, which is always | |
| returned as a little-endian 16-bit integer by the device. | |
| **Return value**: | |
| On success 0 is returned. On error -1 is returned and errno is set | |
| appropriately. | |
| ENOENT | |
| The device does not support the given control or the specified | |
| extension unit could not be found. | |
| ENOBUFS | |
| The specified buffer size is incorrect (too big or too small). | |
| EINVAL | |
| An invalid request code was passed. | |
| EBADRQC | |
| The given request is not supported by the given control. | |
| EFAULT | |
| The data pointer references an inaccessible memory area. | |
| **Data types**: | |
| .. code-block:: none | |
| * struct uvc_xu_control_query | |
| __u8 unit Extension unit ID | |
| __u8 selector Control selector | |
| __u8 query Request code to send to the device | |
| __u16 size Control data size (in bytes) | |
| __u8 *data Control value | |
| Driver-specific V4L2 controls | |
| ----------------------------- | |
| The uvcvideo driver implements the following UVC-specific controls: | |
| ``V4L2_CID_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_RECT (struct)`` | |
| This control determines the region of interest (ROI). ROI is a | |
| rectangular area represented by a struct :c:type:`v4l2_rect`. The | |
| rectangle is in global sensor coordinates using pixel units. It is | |
| independent of the field of view, not impacted by any cropping or | |
| scaling. | |
| Use ``V4L2_CTRL_WHICH_MIN_VAL`` and ``V4L2_CTRL_WHICH_MAX_VAL`` to query | |
| the range of rectangle sizes. | |
| Setting a ROI allows the camera to optimize the capture for the region. | |
| The value of ``V4L2_CID_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO`` control determines | |
| the detailed behavior. | |
| An example of use of this control, can be found in the: | |
| `Chrome OS USB camera HAL. | |
| <https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/refs/heads/release-R121-15699.B/camera/hal/usb/>` | |
| ``V4L2_CID_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO (bitmask)`` | |
| This determines which, if any, on-board features should track to the | |
| Region of Interest specified by the current value of | |
| ``V4L2_CID_UVD__REGION_OF_INTEREST_RECT``. | |
| Max value is a mask indicating all supported Auto Controls. | |
| .. flat-table:: | |
| :header-rows: 0 | |
| :stub-columns: 0 | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_EXPOSURE`` | |
| - Setting this bit causes automatic exposure to track the region of | |
| interest instead of the whole image. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_IRIS`` | |
| - Setting this bit causes automatic iris to track the region of interest | |
| instead of the whole image. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_WHITE_BALANCE`` | |
| - Setting this bit causes automatic white balance to track the region | |
| of interest instead of the whole image. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_FOCUS`` | |
| - Setting this bit causes automatic focus adjustment to track the region | |
| of interest instead of the whole image. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_FACE_DETECT`` | |
| - Setting this bit causes automatic face detection to track the region of | |
| interest instead of the whole image. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_DETECT_AND_TRACK`` | |
| - Setting this bit enables automatic face detection and tracking. The | |
| current value of ``V4L2_CID_REGION_OF_INTEREST_RECT`` may be updated by | |
| the driver. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_IMAGE_STABILIZATION`` | |
| - Setting this bit enables automatic image stabilization. The | |
| current value of ``V4L2_CID_REGION_OF_INTEREST_RECT`` may be updated by | |
| the driver. | |
| * - ``V4L2_UVC_REGION_OF_INTEREST_AUTO_HIGHER_QUALITY`` | |
| - Setting this bit enables automatically capture the specified region | |
| with higher quality if possible. |