Industrial tablets are the quintessential data collection devices in a factory / industry floor and a number of different types of handhelds, tablets are designed and manufactured today.

Selecting and integrating a camera module into an industrial handheld is a bit more complex than other peripheral mainly due to the different applications it has to support, qualitative nature of the imaging requirements, etc. This case study covers how we helped a client integrate our camera module into his rugged industrial tablet.

The customer, a leading industrial tablet manufacturer approached us to help with adding a camera module to their tablet. The main applications were Barcode scanning, OCR, and Image capture for documentation purposes. This was a classic case where a camera is used for visual image capture and image processing. Having chosen an ARM processor, the requirement was to have a MIPI CSI-2 camera module with proper Linux and Android support.

e-con Systems™ provided an off-the-shelf camera e-CAM130_MI1335_MOD - a 13MP Autofocus MIPI camera module. The module choice was based on the image resolution, quality and also its form factor.

The camera module houses a compatible lens with VCM controlled autofocus. It can be used with any application processors, with a MIPI interface. e-con Systems™ interfaced this module with the targeted iMX6 processor. There was a need to customize drivers to suit the Android version and some performance requirements. e-con Systems™ customized the driver and the HAL to support these requirements. We also provided the ISP in a castellated PCB, as the mechanical fitment and form factor were big challenges for the customer.