Trion FPGAs have hardened MIPI CSI-2 interfaces to receive and transmit video. The CSI-2 transmitter is useful for when you want to send video to an application processor. However, in some applications, you may want to send video to a video display using a DSI interface instead. For these situations, you can use a two-chip solution, a Trion FPGA and a MIPI DSI controller chip. To demonstrate how these two chips can work together, Efinix has prototyped a system using the Trion® T120 BGA576 Development Board, Raspberry Pi V2 camera(s), off-the-shelf components, and two custom-built daughter cards.

The prototype is based on the Trion T120 BGA576 Development kit, which comes with a Raspberry Pi camera and a Raspberry Pi Camera Connector daughter card. These components handle the video input. For the DSI output, the prototype uses the from Solomon Systech SSD2828QN4 development board, which has a SSD2828 IC. This chip converts an RGB signal to MIPI DSI. To connect the Trion T120 BGA576 Development Board to the SSD2828 development board, Efinix built a custom daughter card that plugs the two boards together. To display the video, the prototype uses a Solomon Systech BOE5.5 IPS display that has a Solomon Systech SSD2212 driver IC and an LED backlight module. This chip provides 16 million colors at 1080RGB X 1920 resolution. To connect the display to the SSD2828 development board, Efinix built a second custom daughter card.

The following photo shows the complete prototype setup.

Note: The Trion T120 BGA576 Development Board-to-SSD2828 adapter board is not visible in this view because it is connected to the bottom of the Trion T120 BGA576 Development Board and SSD2828QN4 Development Board.

Efinix created two demonstration designs for this prototype system. The first design crops and scales the video from a single camera; the second uses two cameras as input and then outputs a combined stream. You can download these designs in a single zip file from this web site.

Hardware Requirements

• Trion T120 BGA576 Development Board
• 1 Raspberry Pi v2 camera module (2 in Dual-Camera demo)
• 1 (2 in Dual-Camera demo)
• 1 15-pin flat cable (2 in Dual-Camera demo)
• Trion T120 BGA576 Development Board-to-SSD2828 adapter board
• SSD2828QN4 development board
• External backlight module
• SSD2212 FHD TFT panel

Crop-and-Scale Demonstration

This demonstration provides video cropping and scaling functions. The Trion T120 BGA576 development board receives the video data from a Raspberry Pi v2 camera module, processes it, and then transmits the video as a 24-bit RGB signal out of the GPIO pins. The SSD2828 chip then converts the RGB signal to the MIPI DSI protocol. This signal goes to a TFT panel for display.

Dual-Camera Demonstration

In this demonstration, the Trion T120 BGA576 development board receives video data from two Raspberry Pi v2 camera modules, crops it, and then transmits a combined video stream as a 24-bit RGB signal out of the GPIO pins. The SSD2828 chip then converts the RGB signal to the MIPI DSI protocol. This signal goes to a TFT panel for display.