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RHobb's avatar
RHobb
Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
2 years ago
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No User Manual for Terasic D8M-FMC (NDA) ?

I'm interfacing a Terasic D8M-FMC to a Stratix 10 Dev Board, and the problem is none of the register definitions listed in Chapter 6 of the OV8865 Rev 1D manual that Terasic supplied with the CD pack...
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  • RHobb's avatar
    RHobb
    2 years ago

    So apprently, Omnivision reached out to me after I wrote them to obtain a datasheet on there website, which has a link attached to write them directly to obtain a NDA. According to Omnivision, I need to be company or corporation and must order several of there sensors, and they can provide both engineering support, in addition to providing an NDA for there sensor datasheet. The Rev. 1D datasheet is merely a pamphlet to barely even get the sensor running. There are more than 50 registers not documented in this.

    The reasoning is simple, it's there to protect the company and there IP from nefarious reasons. It doesn't make any sense to me, the end user owns the product, but yet they can keep information from you using the product to it's full potential.

    I saw nothing in the marketing material on Terasic website that they had a NDA with Omvision and I would not be given the complete register map for this product. Terasic does have this datasheet but for obvious reasons cannot disclose it.

    Apparently this is now a trend, and more companies are doing the same practices.

RHobb's avatar
RHobb
Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
2 years ago

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.

As stated in my posted question, Terasic claims they do not have any other manual besides the Rev 1D pdf they supplied with the product. They told me it was trial and error. I'm not sure if I believe that, given the fact there are so many hidden registers (i.e. Sensor Control (0x3700-0x37B9) and so many combinations. But the demo code is "as is" with no implied warranties or fitness of application.

So why would they sell a product knowing it has no underlining register definitions? Regardless, I have no solution here. I contacted Omnivision numerous times and nobody will get back with me.

I'm looking for more input from the community on this issue.