OAK-SoM sync image timestamp to external host clock

meaton

Hi,
Does the OAK-SoM have a time synchronization protocol to synchronize time to the host processor, for example the PPS (pulse per second) seen in GPS devices? I am looking into using the OAK-SoM (with stereo cameras) connected to a Linux host system that will host other type of sensors. The host system will be timestamping data from the other sensor and acquiring the timestamped OAK-SoM data. There is a need to correlate the time of the two datasets from the host and OAK-SoM systems.

From the OAK-SoM datasheet, I see it outputs the 24 MHz camera clock reference. This is a start as it can drive a clock on the host system side, but I don't see any other signals to help correlate to system clocks.

Thanks,
Mike E

erik

Hi meaton ,
I believe OAK cameras sync their internal clock to hosts std::chrono::steady_clock (also accessible on Python via dai.Clock.now()). So you could also compare eg. frame timestamp (imgFrame.getTimestamp()) with this host timestamp to calculate time-to-host (from camera) delay as described here. Thoughts?
Thanks, Erik

meaton

Thanks for the quick reply! The information you provided is very useful. I also realized I can route the COM_AUX_IO2 (Frame Sync Input) output signal to the host system to timestamp events on a common clock.