ArduCAM USB3 Camera Shield

User Guide
Rev 1.0, May 2018
 ArduCAM USB3 Camera Shield User Guide

Table of Contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2
2 Hardware Installation............................................................................................................. 2
2.1 Primary Camera Interface ............................................................................................. 2
2.2 Secondary Camera Interface ......................................................................................... 3
3 Device Driver Installation....................................................................................................... 4
4 Demo Code ............................................................................................................................... 7
4.1 Camera Settings .............................................................................................................. 8
4.2 Open the Camera ............................................................................................................ 9
4.3 Play the Video .................................................................................................................. 9
4.4 Stop the Video .................................................................................................................. 9
4.5 Take a Snapshot............................................................................................................... 9
4.6 Sensor Register Read/Write ........................................................................................... 9
4.7 RAW Mode Selection ...................................................................................................... 9

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 ArduCAM USB3 Camera Shield User Guide

1 Introduction
This user guide describes the detail operation of ArduCAM USB3 camera shield. The latest
device driver, SDK library and examples can be downloaded from the
https://github.com/ArduCAM/ArduCAM_USB_Camera_Shield.

2 Hardware Installation

There are two camera interface provided on the USB3 camera shield, but only one camera
interface can be used at a time.
2.1 8-bit Camera Interface
The primary camera interface is used for camera breakout board with 30pin ribbon cable. The
pin definition is shown in Table 1. Although the camera breakout board might has more than 8bit
data bus, only the upper 8bit connected to the USB camera shield through this FPC connector.

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Table 1 8-bit Camera Interface Pin Definition

(Connector Part Number: Hirose FH28D-30S-0.5SH(05))
Pin No. PIN NAME TYPE DESCRIPTION
1 GND Ground Power ground
2 Reserved NC
3 Reserved NC
4 VSYNC Input Active High: Frame Valid; indicates active frame
5 HREF Input Active High: Line/Data Valid; indicates active pixels
6 DOUT11 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 11 (MSB)
7 DOUT10 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 10
8 DOUT9 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 9
9 DOUT8 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 8
10 DOUT7 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 7
11 DOUT6 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 6
12 DOUT5 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 5
13 GND Ground Power ground
14 DOUT4 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 4 (LSB)
15 DOUT3 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 3 (Unconnected)
16 DOUT2 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 2 (Unconnected)
17 DOUT1 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 1 (Unconnected)
18 DOUT0 Input Camera Pixel Data Input 0 (Unconnected)
19 Reserved NC
20 PCLK Input Pixel Clock output from Camera
21 SCL Output Two-Wire Serial Interface Clock
22 SDATA Bi-directional Two-Wire Serial Interface Data I/O
23 RST Output Sensor reset signal, active low
24 GND Ground Power ground
25 GND Ground Power ground
26 STANDBY Output Standby-mode enable pin (active HIGH)
27~30 VCC POWER 3.3v Power supply

2.216-bit Camera Interface

The secondary camera interface is used for MIPI camera, stereo-camera or customized
camera adapter boards which support up to 16bit data bus. The pin definition is shown in Table 2.

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Table 2 16-bit Camera Interface Pin Definition

(Connector Part Number: Harwin M50-4302045)
Pin No. PIN NAME TYPE Pin No. PIN NAME TYPE
1 VCC3.3 POWER 2 VCC3.3 POWER
3 GND Ground 4 GND Ground
5 SDATA Bi-directional 6 SCL Input
7 Data10 Input 8 Data12 Input
9 Data11 Input 10 Data13 Input
11 Data8 Input 12 Data6 Input
13 Data3 Input 14 Data0 Input
15 RST Output 16 Data4 Input
17 Data7 Input 18 Data9 Input
19 Reserved NC 20 STANDBY Output
21 Reserved NC 22 Reserved NC
23 Data14 Input 24 HREF Input
25 Reserved NC 26 VSYNC Input
27 Reserved NC 28 GND Ground
29 PCLK Input 30 GND Ground
31 Data1 Input 32 Data5 Input
33 Reserved NC 34 Data15 Input
35 Data2 Input 36 Reserved NC
37 Reserved NC 38 Reserved NC
39 Reserved NC 40 USB_RST Input

3 Device Driver Installation

Please download the device driver from github. The Windows device driver is located in
Drivers folder like WinXP, Win7 or Win10. In each driver folder there are x64 and x86 folders for
64bit and 32bit system respectively.
When install the driver on Windows, you might need to disable the Windows driver signature
by following the two video below:
https://youtu.be/71YAIw7_-kg
https://youtu.be/gOTkrFp8oM4
Plug in the USB cable to the camera and the host PC USB port, there is notification from the
lower right of the task bar. The auto installation of the driver will fail, so we have to install the
USB camera driver manually.

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Go to Start->Settings->Control-Panel->Device Manager, right click the unknown device and

select "Update Driver Software".

Select the "Browse my compute for driver software"

Select "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer".

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Select "Show All Devices".

Press the "Have Disk" button.

Enter the path to the ArduCAM USB3 driver, where you save the downloaded file from
github.

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Confirm the installation of the driver by pressing "Yes".

Confirm the installation again by pressing "Install".

You will successfully install the driver like this.

4 Demo Code
The demo code is provided in source code form to help user to understand the operation the
ArduCAM USB camera and SDK library. It is created with Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 and

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based on MFC frame work.

The Windows demo code is located in ../Winodws/USBTest folder and the release executable
software is located in ../ Winodws/USBTest/USBTest.exe.

4.1 Scan Cameras

Click the scan button, the drop down list will show all supported cameras with serial number,
user can select one of them to open.
4.2 Load the Camera Settings
There are several preset of the camera settings in the Config folder, select one of the
corresponding camera setting from the drop list and click load to load the setting. The camera type,
width, height, bits, format, I2CAddr, I2CMode will be loaded with the correct values.
4.3 Open the Camera
Click Open to open the camera selected from the camera drop list.
4.4 Play the Video
Click the Play to capture and display the video in real-time.
4.5 Stop the Video
Click the Stop button to stop the video capture and display.
4.6 Take a Snapshot
Click the Shot to take BMP image to files.
4.7 Sensor Register Read/Write
This is very useful to access the sensor register in order to adjust the sensor settings on the fly.
For example you want to manually change the exposure settings you can input the exposure
register address and value then click write, you can video how the brightness changes from the
video.
4.8 RAW Mode Selection
There are four combination of the RAW format R-G, G-R, B-G, G-B. It is predefined for
tested camera, you can also changes the mode match your target sensor RAW display order.
4.9 Camera Control
4.9.1 Fit to Window
To fit the captured image to the GUI windows size. If this is unchecked, user can use
mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out the real-time video, or drag the mouse cursor to move

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the video position.

4.9.2 Force Display
Force display is useful to debug the problem by force displaying the wrong video data
which is mismatch with the camera preset values.
4.9.3 IRcut
It can be used to manual control extra motorized IRCUT filter for both daylight and
night vision.
4.9.4 Frame Rate Information
The frame rate information show the capture frame rate and GUI display frame rate.
These two values might be mismatched, due to the performance of the demo GUI software
and computer hardware.
4.10 Image Save Options
There are several options for saving image files and format. The Display option doesn’t save
any file just real-time display the video from the camera. The Save Data option is used to save the
continuous images in the same format as the camera output like RAW, RGB, YUV or JPEG. The
Save Image option is used to save the BMP images. The Save Video options is used to save the
AVI format video. Except the Display option, when checking other options, the video is not
updated on the display region.
4.11 Stereo Display Options
This options are only available when using stereo camera adapter board. The SideBySide
option displays the video in left and right order. The UpsideDown option displays the video up
and down order.

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