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Hardware tools for non-invasively sniffing MIPI D-Phy links.
In order to contribute useful data to the OpenHD project, I designed a simple PCB that splices two 15-pin MIPI FFCs end-to-end, to allow non-invasive, man-in-the-middle sniffing of the data. This serves several purposes:
No more risk of shorting or ripping pads by clipping onto the FPC connector
Sensor ICs incorporate buffering stages between pixel capture and ISP. By probing the data lanes and a strobing light source, one can measure how long the module takes to process each pixel/line/stripe/field/frame as the delay between the strobe pulse and the first transmission of "bright" bytes on a data lane. This will help determine which modules are best suited to our low-latency application.
Due to the sensitivity of LVDS to impedence changes and phase, the length and impedence-matched routing on the MIPI Spy presents the best possible scenario for observing the signal with minimual harm to the transmission quality. Ideally, this means 0 extra retransmissions incurred due to instrumentation. Compared to scratching the coating off of an FFC and soldering on leads, this is a major step up.
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