Ambarella Unveils SL2m IP Camera Reference Design Promising up to 6 Months of Battery Life

Ambarella S2Lm IP Camera SoC features a Cortex A9 CPU core, encodes video with H.264 up to 3Mp30 / 1080p30, and targets consumer and entry-level IP Camera designs. The company recently launched a new battery-powered IP camera reference design based on the solution that promises up to 6 months battery life, and can record Full HD video in less than 500ms from wake up, making ideal for battery operated security cameras. A Linux SDK is also provided with reference implementations for low-power standby operation, wake-on-Wi-Fi and fast boot to Linux.

Unfortunately, that’s about all we know about the reference design, so instead I’ll have a look at the processor, and SL2m IP camera evaluation board.

Ambarella_S2Lm_IP_Camera_Reference_Design — S2Lm IP Camera Evaluation Board

Ambarella SL2m SoC specifications:

CPU – ARM Cortex-A9 processor with 32KB/32KB I/D and 128 KB L2 Cache, NEON and FPU,
Crypto Engine – AES/3/DES/SHA-1/MD5
DSP / VPU – Ambarella Image and Video DSPs
Sensor and Video I/O
- RGB Bayer sensor port: 8-lane SLVS/MIPI/HiSPI
- BT.601/656/1120 video in and BT.656/1120 out
- PAL/NTSC composite SD video out
Front End Sensor Processing
- 5 MPixels maximum resolution/ 240 MHz maximum pixel rate
- Lens shading, fixed pattern noise correction
- Multi-exposure HDR (line-interleaved sensors), WDR (Wide dynamic range) local exposure
Image Processing
- 3D motion compensated noise reduction (MCTF)
- Adjustable AE/AWB/AF
- Wide angle lens distortion compensation
- High quality polyphase scalers
- Digital PTZ and Virtual Cameras
- OSD engine; overlays, privacy mask; Crop, mirror, flip, 90°/270° rotation
- DC-iris and P-iris
- Defect pixel correction; Chroma lens distortion correction; Gamma compensation and color enhancement; Backlight compensation
Video Analytics
- Advanced 3rd party analytics options
- Face detection and tracking
- Intelligent motion detection
- Tampering detection
Video Encoding
- H.264 codec BP/MP/HP Level 5.1 and MJPEG
- 5 MPixels maximum resolution
- 3M@30 fps encoding performance
- Up to 4 simultaneous stream encodes
- SmartAVC (Smart Advanced Video Coding) low bitrate/high quality encoding
- On-the-fly change of multiple encoding parameters
- Flexible GOP configuration with I, P and B frames
- Temporal Scalable Video Codec with 4 Layers (SVCT)
- Dynamic region of interest
- Multiple CBR and VBR rate control modes
Memory Interfaces
- DDR3/DDR3L up to 528MHz
- SD controller with SDXC SD Card
- NAND flash, SLC with ECC
- Boot from SPI-NOR, SPI-EEPROM, NAND flash, USB or eMMC
Peripheral Interfaces
- 10/100 Ethernet with RMII/MII
- USB2.0 Device or Host w/PHY
- Multiple I2S, SSI/SPI, IDC, and UART
- Multiple PWM, Stepper, and ADC channels
- Many GPIO ports, PWM, Steppers, IR, ADC
- Watchdog Timer, multiple general purpose timers, JTAG
Process – 28nm Low Power CMOS
Operating temperature – -20°C to +85°C
Package – TFBGA package with 256 balls, 11×11 mm, 0.65 mm pitch

Block Diagram for a Typical S2Lm IP Camera (Click to Enlarge)

The company can provide a complete SL2m IP camera development platform comprised of:

An hardware evaluation kit (as shown in the top picture) with a baseboard with SL2m processor and a sensor board with a camera from Aptina, Omnivision, Panasonic, Sony or others.
A software development kit (SDK) based on Linux 3.8 kernel with relevant patchsets, drivers, tools and application source code.

Hard design files including datasheets, the bill of materials, schematics and PCB layout are all available, as well as C source code for reference applications. The libraries for the ISP, dewarp and codecs are royalty-free, the company also offers tools for image tuning and manufacturing calibration, as well as detailed software documentation.

Pricing and availability information for the new battery operated S2LM reference design are not known, and they ask you to contact them for details. But the SoC and and the evaluation kit are available now at undisclosed prices. I found most the information in S2Lm product brief which can also be downloaded via Ambarella IP Camera product page.

Via LinuxGizmos.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.