Merge branch 'kbuild' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mmarek/kbuild
[GitHub/mt8127/android_kernel_alcatel_ttab.git] / Documentation / video4linux / v4l2-controls.txt
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1Introduction
2============
3
4The V4L2 control API seems simple enough, but quickly becomes very hard to
5implement correctly in drivers. But much of the code needed to handle controls
6is actually not driver specific and can be moved to the V4L core framework.
7
8After all, the only part that a driver developer is interested in is:
9
101) How do I add a control?
112) How do I set the control's value? (i.e. s_ctrl)
12
13And occasionally:
14
153) How do I get the control's value? (i.e. g_volatile_ctrl)
164) How do I validate the user's proposed control value? (i.e. try_ctrl)
17
18All the rest is something that can be done centrally.
19
20The control framework was created in order to implement all the rules of the
21V4L2 specification with respect to controls in a central place. And to make
22life as easy as possible for the driver developer.
23
24Note that the control framework relies on the presence of a struct v4l2_device
25for V4L2 drivers and struct v4l2_subdev for sub-device drivers.
26
27
28Objects in the framework
29========================
30
31There are two main objects:
32
33The v4l2_ctrl object describes the control properties and keeps track of the
34control's value (both the current value and the proposed new value).
35
36v4l2_ctrl_handler is the object that keeps track of controls. It maintains a
37list of v4l2_ctrl objects that it owns and another list of references to
38controls, possibly to controls owned by other handlers.
39
40
41Basic usage for V4L2 and sub-device drivers
42===========================================
43
441) Prepare the driver:
45
461.1) Add the handler to your driver's top-level struct:
47
48 struct foo_dev {
49 ...
50 struct v4l2_ctrl_handler ctrl_handler;
51 ...
52 };
53
54 struct foo_dev *foo;
55
561.2) Initialize the handler:
57
58 v4l2_ctrl_handler_init(&foo->ctrl_handler, nr_of_controls);
59
60 The second argument is a hint telling the function how many controls this
61 handler is expected to handle. It will allocate a hashtable based on this
62 information. It is a hint only.
63
641.3) Hook the control handler into the driver:
65
661.3.1) For V4L2 drivers do this:
67
68 struct foo_dev {
69 ...
70 struct v4l2_device v4l2_dev;
71 ...
72 struct v4l2_ctrl_handler ctrl_handler;
73 ...
74 };
75
76 foo->v4l2_dev.ctrl_handler = &foo->ctrl_handler;
77
78 Where foo->v4l2_dev is of type struct v4l2_device.
79
80 Finally, remove all control functions from your v4l2_ioctl_ops:
81 vidioc_queryctrl, vidioc_querymenu, vidioc_g_ctrl, vidioc_s_ctrl,
82 vidioc_g_ext_ctrls, vidioc_try_ext_ctrls and vidioc_s_ext_ctrls.
83 Those are now no longer needed.
84
851.3.2) For sub-device drivers do this:
86
87 struct foo_dev {
88 ...
89 struct v4l2_subdev sd;
90 ...
91 struct v4l2_ctrl_handler ctrl_handler;
92 ...
93 };
94
95 foo->sd.ctrl_handler = &foo->ctrl_handler;
96
97 Where foo->sd is of type struct v4l2_subdev.
98
99 And set all core control ops in your struct v4l2_subdev_core_ops to these
100 helpers:
101
102 .queryctrl = v4l2_subdev_queryctrl,
103 .querymenu = v4l2_subdev_querymenu,
104 .g_ctrl = v4l2_subdev_g_ctrl,
105 .s_ctrl = v4l2_subdev_s_ctrl,
106 .g_ext_ctrls = v4l2_subdev_g_ext_ctrls,
107 .try_ext_ctrls = v4l2_subdev_try_ext_ctrls,
108 .s_ext_ctrls = v4l2_subdev_s_ext_ctrls,
109
110 Note: this is a temporary solution only. Once all V4L2 drivers that depend
111 on subdev drivers are converted to the control framework these helpers will
112 no longer be needed.
113
1141.4) Clean up the handler at the end:
115
116 v4l2_ctrl_handler_free(&foo->ctrl_handler);
117
118
1192) Add controls:
120
121You add non-menu controls by calling v4l2_ctrl_new_std:
122
123 struct v4l2_ctrl *v4l2_ctrl_new_std(struct v4l2_ctrl_handler *hdl,
124 const struct v4l2_ctrl_ops *ops,
125 u32 id, s32 min, s32 max, u32 step, s32 def);
126
127Menu controls are added by calling v4l2_ctrl_new_std_menu:
128
129 struct v4l2_ctrl *v4l2_ctrl_new_std_menu(struct v4l2_ctrl_handler *hdl,
130 const struct v4l2_ctrl_ops *ops,
131 u32 id, s32 max, s32 skip_mask, s32 def);
132
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133Or alternatively for integer menu controls, by calling v4l2_ctrl_new_int_menu:
134
135 struct v4l2_ctrl *v4l2_ctrl_new_int_menu(struct v4l2_ctrl_handler *hdl,
136 const struct v4l2_ctrl_ops *ops,
137 u32 id, s32 max, s32 def, const s64 *qmenu_int);
138
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139These functions are typically called right after the v4l2_ctrl_handler_init:
140
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141 static const s64 exp_bias_qmenu[] = {
142 -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
143 };
144
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145 v4l2_ctrl_handler_init(&foo->ctrl_handler, nr_of_controls);
146 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&foo->ctrl_handler, &foo_ctrl_ops,
147 V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS, 0, 255, 1, 128);
148 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&foo->ctrl_handler, &foo_ctrl_ops,
149 V4L2_CID_CONTRAST, 0, 255, 1, 128);
150 v4l2_ctrl_new_std_menu(&foo->ctrl_handler, &foo_ctrl_ops,
151 V4L2_CID_POWER_LINE_FREQUENCY,
152 V4L2_CID_POWER_LINE_FREQUENCY_60HZ, 0,
153 V4L2_CID_POWER_LINE_FREQUENCY_DISABLED);
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154 v4l2_ctrl_new_int_menu(&foo->ctrl_handler, &foo_ctrl_ops,
155 V4L2_CID_EXPOSURE_BIAS,
156 ARRAY_SIZE(exp_bias_qmenu) - 1,
157 ARRAY_SIZE(exp_bias_qmenu) / 2 - 1,
158 exp_bias_qmenu);
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159 ...
160 if (foo->ctrl_handler.error) {
161 int err = foo->ctrl_handler.error;
162
163 v4l2_ctrl_handler_free(&foo->ctrl_handler);
164 return err;
165 }
166
167The v4l2_ctrl_new_std function returns the v4l2_ctrl pointer to the new
168control, but if you do not need to access the pointer outside the control ops,
169then there is no need to store it.
170
171The v4l2_ctrl_new_std function will fill in most fields based on the control
172ID except for the min, max, step and default values. These are passed in the
173last four arguments. These values are driver specific while control attributes
174like type, name, flags are all global. The control's current value will be set
175to the default value.
176
177The v4l2_ctrl_new_std_menu function is very similar but it is used for menu
178controls. There is no min argument since that is always 0 for menu controls,
179and instead of a step there is a skip_mask argument: if bit X is 1, then menu
180item X is skipped.
181
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182The v4l2_ctrl_new_int_menu function creates a new standard integer menu
183control with driver-specific items in the menu. It differs from
184v4l2_ctrl_new_std_menu in that it doesn't have the mask argument and takes
185as the last argument an array of signed 64-bit integers that form an exact
186menu item list.
187
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188Note that if something fails, the function will return NULL or an error and
189set ctrl_handler->error to the error code. If ctrl_handler->error was already
190set, then it will just return and do nothing. This is also true for
191v4l2_ctrl_handler_init if it cannot allocate the internal data structure.
192
193This makes it easy to init the handler and just add all controls and only check
194the error code at the end. Saves a lot of repetitive error checking.
195
196It is recommended to add controls in ascending control ID order: it will be
197a bit faster that way.
198
1993) Optionally force initial control setup:
200
201 v4l2_ctrl_handler_setup(&foo->ctrl_handler);
202
203This will call s_ctrl for all controls unconditionally. Effectively this
204initializes the hardware to the default control values. It is recommended
205that you do this as this ensures that both the internal data structures and
206the hardware are in sync.
207
2084) Finally: implement the v4l2_ctrl_ops
209
210 static const struct v4l2_ctrl_ops foo_ctrl_ops = {
211 .s_ctrl = foo_s_ctrl,
212 };
213
214Usually all you need is s_ctrl:
215
216 static int foo_s_ctrl(struct v4l2_ctrl *ctrl)
217 {
218 struct foo *state = container_of(ctrl->handler, struct foo, ctrl_handler);
219
220 switch (ctrl->id) {
221 case V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS:
222 write_reg(0x123, ctrl->val);
223 break;
224 case V4L2_CID_CONTRAST:
225 write_reg(0x456, ctrl->val);
226 break;
227 }
228 return 0;
229 }
230
231The control ops are called with the v4l2_ctrl pointer as argument.
232The new control value has already been validated, so all you need to do is
233to actually update the hardware registers.
234
235You're done! And this is sufficient for most of the drivers we have. No need
236to do any validation of control values, or implement QUERYCTRL/QUERYMENU. And
237G/S_CTRL as well as G/TRY/S_EXT_CTRLS are automatically supported.
238
239
240==============================================================================
241
242The remainder of this document deals with more advanced topics and scenarios.
243In practice the basic usage as described above is sufficient for most drivers.
244
245===============================================================================
246
247
248Inheriting Controls
249===================
250
251When a sub-device is registered with a V4L2 driver by calling
252v4l2_device_register_subdev() and the ctrl_handler fields of both v4l2_subdev
253and v4l2_device are set, then the controls of the subdev will become
254automatically available in the V4L2 driver as well. If the subdev driver
255contains controls that already exist in the V4L2 driver, then those will be
256skipped (so a V4L2 driver can always override a subdev control).
257
258What happens here is that v4l2_device_register_subdev() calls
259v4l2_ctrl_add_handler() adding the controls of the subdev to the controls
260of v4l2_device.
261
262
263Accessing Control Values
264========================
265
266The v4l2_ctrl struct contains these two unions:
267
268 /* The current control value. */
269 union {
270 s32 val;
271 s64 val64;
272 char *string;
273 } cur;
274
275 /* The new control value. */
276 union {
277 s32 val;
278 s64 val64;
279 char *string;
280 };
281
282Within the control ops you can freely use these. The val and val64 speak for
283themselves. The string pointers point to character buffers of length
284ctrl->maximum + 1, and are always 0-terminated.
285
286In most cases 'cur' contains the current cached control value. When you create
287a new control this value is made identical to the default value. After calling
288v4l2_ctrl_handler_setup() this value is passed to the hardware. It is generally
289a good idea to call this function.
290
291Whenever a new value is set that new value is automatically cached. This means
292that most drivers do not need to implement the g_volatile_ctrl() op. The
293exception is for controls that return a volatile register such as a signal
294strength read-out that changes continuously. In that case you will need to
295implement g_volatile_ctrl like this:
296
297 static int foo_g_volatile_ctrl(struct v4l2_ctrl *ctrl)
298 {
299 switch (ctrl->id) {
300 case V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS:
78866efe 301 ctrl->val = read_reg(0x123);
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302 break;
303 }
304 }
305
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306Note that you use the 'new value' union as well in g_volatile_ctrl. In general
307controls that need to implement g_volatile_ctrl are read-only controls.
2a863793 308
88365105 309To mark a control as volatile you have to set V4L2_CTRL_FLAG_VOLATILE:
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310
311 ctrl = v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&sd->ctrl_handler, ...);
312 if (ctrl)
88365105 313 ctrl->flags |= V4L2_CTRL_FLAG_VOLATILE;
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314
315For try/s_ctrl the new values (i.e. as passed by the user) are filled in and
316you can modify them in try_ctrl or set them in s_ctrl. The 'cur' union
317contains the current value, which you can use (but not change!) as well.
318
319If s_ctrl returns 0 (OK), then the control framework will copy the new final
320values to the 'cur' union.
321
322While in g_volatile/s/try_ctrl you can access the value of all controls owned
323by the same handler since the handler's lock is held. If you need to access
324the value of controls owned by other handlers, then you have to be very careful
325not to introduce deadlocks.
326
327Outside of the control ops you have to go through to helper functions to get
328or set a single control value safely in your driver:
329
330 s32 v4l2_ctrl_g_ctrl(struct v4l2_ctrl *ctrl);
331 int v4l2_ctrl_s_ctrl(struct v4l2_ctrl *ctrl, s32 val);
332
333These functions go through the control framework just as VIDIOC_G/S_CTRL ioctls
334do. Don't use these inside the control ops g_volatile/s/try_ctrl, though, that
335will result in a deadlock since these helpers lock the handler as well.
336
337You can also take the handler lock yourself:
338
339 mutex_lock(&state->ctrl_handler.lock);
340 printk(KERN_INFO "String value is '%s'\n", ctrl1->cur.string);
341 printk(KERN_INFO "Integer value is '%s'\n", ctrl2->cur.val);
342 mutex_unlock(&state->ctrl_handler.lock);
343
344
345Menu Controls
346=============
347
348The v4l2_ctrl struct contains this union:
349
350 union {
351 u32 step;
352 u32 menu_skip_mask;
353 };
354
355For menu controls menu_skip_mask is used. What it does is that it allows you
356to easily exclude certain menu items. This is used in the VIDIOC_QUERYMENU
357implementation where you can return -EINVAL if a certain menu item is not
358present. Note that VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL always returns a step value of 1 for
359menu controls.
360
361A good example is the MPEG Audio Layer II Bitrate menu control where the
362menu is a list of standardized possible bitrates. But in practice hardware
363implementations will only support a subset of those. By setting the skip
364mask you can tell the framework which menu items should be skipped. Setting
365it to 0 means that all menu items are supported.
366
367You set this mask either through the v4l2_ctrl_config struct for a custom
368control, or by calling v4l2_ctrl_new_std_menu().
369
370
371Custom Controls
372===============
373
374Driver specific controls can be created using v4l2_ctrl_new_custom():
375
376 static const struct v4l2_ctrl_config ctrl_filter = {
377 .ops = &ctrl_custom_ops,
378 .id = V4L2_CID_MPEG_CX2341X_VIDEO_SPATIAL_FILTER,
379 .name = "Spatial Filter",
380 .type = V4L2_CTRL_TYPE_INTEGER,
381 .flags = V4L2_CTRL_FLAG_SLIDER,
382 .max = 15,
383 .step = 1,
384 };
385
386 ctrl = v4l2_ctrl_new_custom(&foo->ctrl_handler, &ctrl_filter, NULL);
387
388The last argument is the priv pointer which can be set to driver-specific
389private data.
390
88365105 391The v4l2_ctrl_config struct also has a field to set the is_private flag.
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392
393If the name field is not set, then the framework will assume this is a standard
394control and will fill in the name, type and flags fields accordingly.
395
396
397Active and Grabbed Controls
398===========================
399
400If you get more complex relationships between controls, then you may have to
401activate and deactivate controls. For example, if the Chroma AGC control is
402on, then the Chroma Gain control is inactive. That is, you may set it, but
403the value will not be used by the hardware as long as the automatic gain
404control is on. Typically user interfaces can disable such input fields.
405
406You can set the 'active' status using v4l2_ctrl_activate(). By default all
407controls are active. Note that the framework does not check for this flag.
408It is meant purely for GUIs. The function is typically called from within
409s_ctrl.
410
411The other flag is the 'grabbed' flag. A grabbed control means that you cannot
412change it because it is in use by some resource. Typical examples are MPEG
413bitrate controls that cannot be changed while capturing is in progress.
414
415If a control is set to 'grabbed' using v4l2_ctrl_grab(), then the framework
416will return -EBUSY if an attempt is made to set this control. The
417v4l2_ctrl_grab() function is typically called from the driver when it
418starts or stops streaming.
419
420
421Control Clusters
422================
423
424By default all controls are independent from the others. But in more
425complex scenarios you can get dependencies from one control to another.
426In that case you need to 'cluster' them:
427
428 struct foo {
429 struct v4l2_ctrl_handler ctrl_handler;
430#define AUDIO_CL_VOLUME (0)
431#define AUDIO_CL_MUTE (1)
432 struct v4l2_ctrl *audio_cluster[2];
433 ...
434 };
435
436 state->audio_cluster[AUDIO_CL_VOLUME] =
437 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&state->ctrl_handler, ...);
438 state->audio_cluster[AUDIO_CL_MUTE] =
439 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&state->ctrl_handler, ...);
440 v4l2_ctrl_cluster(ARRAY_SIZE(state->audio_cluster), state->audio_cluster);
441
442From now on whenever one or more of the controls belonging to the same
443cluster is set (or 'gotten', or 'tried'), only the control ops of the first
444control ('volume' in this example) is called. You effectively create a new
445composite control. Similar to how a 'struct' works in C.
446
447So when s_ctrl is called with V4L2_CID_AUDIO_VOLUME as argument, you should set
448all two controls belonging to the audio_cluster:
449
450 static int foo_s_ctrl(struct v4l2_ctrl *ctrl)
451 {
452 struct foo *state = container_of(ctrl->handler, struct foo, ctrl_handler);
453
454 switch (ctrl->id) {
455 case V4L2_CID_AUDIO_VOLUME: {
456 struct v4l2_ctrl *mute = ctrl->cluster[AUDIO_CL_MUTE];
457
458 write_reg(0x123, mute->val ? 0 : ctrl->val);
459 break;
460 }
461 case V4L2_CID_CONTRAST:
462 write_reg(0x456, ctrl->val);
463 break;
464 }
465 return 0;
466 }
467
468In the example above the following are equivalent for the VOLUME case:
469
470 ctrl == ctrl->cluster[AUDIO_CL_VOLUME] == state->audio_cluster[AUDIO_CL_VOLUME]
471 ctrl->cluster[AUDIO_CL_MUTE] == state->audio_cluster[AUDIO_CL_MUTE]
472
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473In practice using cluster arrays like this becomes very tiresome. So instead
474the following equivalent method is used:
475
476 struct {
477 /* audio cluster */
478 struct v4l2_ctrl *volume;
479 struct v4l2_ctrl *mute;
480 };
481
482The anonymous struct is used to clearly 'cluster' these two control pointers,
483but it serves no other purpose. The effect is the same as creating an
484array with two control pointers. So you can just do:
485
486 state->volume = v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&state->ctrl_handler, ...);
487 state->mute = v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&state->ctrl_handler, ...);
488 v4l2_ctrl_cluster(2, &state->volume);
489
490And in foo_s_ctrl you can use these pointers directly: state->mute->val.
491
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492Note that controls in a cluster may be NULL. For example, if for some
493reason mute was never added (because the hardware doesn't support that
494particular feature), then mute will be NULL. So in that case we have a
495cluster of 2 controls, of which only 1 is actually instantiated. The
496only restriction is that the first control of the cluster must always be
497present, since that is the 'master' control of the cluster. The master
498control is the one that identifies the cluster and that provides the
499pointer to the v4l2_ctrl_ops struct that is used for that cluster.
500
501Obviously, all controls in the cluster array must be initialized to either
502a valid control or to NULL.
503
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504In rare cases you might want to know which controls of a cluster actually
505were set explicitly by the user. For this you can check the 'is_new' flag of
506each control. For example, in the case of a volume/mute cluster the 'is_new'
507flag of the mute control would be set if the user called VIDIOC_S_CTRL for
508mute only. If the user would call VIDIOC_S_EXT_CTRLS for both mute and volume
509controls, then the 'is_new' flag would be 1 for both controls.
510
511The 'is_new' flag is always 1 when called from v4l2_ctrl_handler_setup().
512
a42b57f5 513
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514Handling autogain/gain-type Controls with Auto Clusters
515=======================================================
516
517A common type of control cluster is one that handles 'auto-foo/foo'-type
518controls. Typical examples are autogain/gain, autoexposure/exposure,
882a935c 519autowhitebalance/red balance/blue balance. In all cases you have one control
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520that determines whether another control is handled automatically by the hardware,
521or whether it is under manual control from the user.
522
523If the cluster is in automatic mode, then the manual controls should be
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524marked inactive and volatile. When the volatile controls are read the
525g_volatile_ctrl operation should return the value that the hardware's automatic
526mode set up automatically.
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527
528If the cluster is put in manual mode, then the manual controls should become
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529active again and the volatile flag is cleared (so g_volatile_ctrl is no longer
530called while in manual mode). In addition just before switching to manual mode
531the current values as determined by the auto mode are copied as the new manual
532values.
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533
534Finally the V4L2_CTRL_FLAG_UPDATE should be set for the auto control since
535changing that control affects the control flags of the manual controls.
536
537In order to simplify this a special variation of v4l2_ctrl_cluster was
538introduced:
539
540void v4l2_ctrl_auto_cluster(unsigned ncontrols, struct v4l2_ctrl **controls,
541 u8 manual_val, bool set_volatile);
542
543The first two arguments are identical to v4l2_ctrl_cluster. The third argument
544tells the framework which value switches the cluster into manual mode. The
88365105 545last argument will optionally set V4L2_CTRL_FLAG_VOLATILE for the non-auto controls.
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546If it is false, then the manual controls are never volatile. You would typically
547use that if the hardware does not give you the option to read back to values as
548determined by the auto mode (e.g. if autogain is on, the hardware doesn't allow
549you to obtain the current gain value).
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550
551The first control of the cluster is assumed to be the 'auto' control.
552
553Using this function will ensure that you don't need to handle all the complex
554flag and volatile handling.
555
556
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557VIDIOC_LOG_STATUS Support
558=========================
559
560This ioctl allow you to dump the current status of a driver to the kernel log.
561The v4l2_ctrl_handler_log_status(ctrl_handler, prefix) can be used to dump the
562value of the controls owned by the given handler to the log. You can supply a
563prefix as well. If the prefix didn't end with a space, then ': ' will be added
564for you.
565
566
567Different Handlers for Different Video Nodes
568============================================
569
570Usually the V4L2 driver has just one control handler that is global for
571all video nodes. But you can also specify different control handlers for
572different video nodes. You can do that by manually setting the ctrl_handler
573field of struct video_device.
574
575That is no problem if there are no subdevs involved but if there are, then
576you need to block the automatic merging of subdev controls to the global
577control handler. You do that by simply setting the ctrl_handler field in
578struct v4l2_device to NULL. Now v4l2_device_register_subdev() will no longer
579merge subdev controls.
580
581After each subdev was added, you will then have to call v4l2_ctrl_add_handler
582manually to add the subdev's control handler (sd->ctrl_handler) to the desired
583control handler. This control handler may be specific to the video_device or
584for a subset of video_device's. For example: the radio device nodes only have
585audio controls, while the video and vbi device nodes share the same control
586handler for the audio and video controls.
587
588If you want to have one handler (e.g. for a radio device node) have a subset
589of another handler (e.g. for a video device node), then you should first add
590the controls to the first handler, add the other controls to the second
591handler and finally add the first handler to the second. For example:
592
593 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&radio_ctrl_handler, &radio_ops, V4L2_CID_AUDIO_VOLUME, ...);
594 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&radio_ctrl_handler, &radio_ops, V4L2_CID_AUDIO_MUTE, ...);
595 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&video_ctrl_handler, &video_ops, V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS, ...);
596 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&video_ctrl_handler, &video_ops, V4L2_CID_CONTRAST, ...);
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597 v4l2_ctrl_add_handler(&video_ctrl_handler, &radio_ctrl_handler, NULL);
598
599The last argument to v4l2_ctrl_add_handler() is a filter function that allows
600you to filter which controls will be added. Set it to NULL if you want to add
601all controls.
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602
603Or you can add specific controls to a handler:
604
605 volume = v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&video_ctrl_handler, &ops, V4L2_CID_AUDIO_VOLUME, ...);
606 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&video_ctrl_handler, &ops, V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS, ...);
607 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&video_ctrl_handler, &ops, V4L2_CID_CONTRAST, ...);
608 v4l2_ctrl_add_ctrl(&radio_ctrl_handler, volume);
609
610What you should not do is make two identical controls for two handlers.
611For example:
612
613 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&radio_ctrl_handler, &radio_ops, V4L2_CID_AUDIO_MUTE, ...);
614 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&video_ctrl_handler, &video_ops, V4L2_CID_AUDIO_MUTE, ...);
615
616This would be bad since muting the radio would not change the video mute
617control. The rule is to have one control for each hardware 'knob' that you
618can twiddle.
619
620
621Finding Controls
622================
623
624Normally you have created the controls yourself and you can store the struct
625v4l2_ctrl pointer into your own struct.
626
627But sometimes you need to find a control from another handler that you do
628not own. For example, if you have to find a volume control from a subdev.
629
630You can do that by calling v4l2_ctrl_find:
631
632 struct v4l2_ctrl *volume;
633
634 volume = v4l2_ctrl_find(sd->ctrl_handler, V4L2_CID_AUDIO_VOLUME);
635
636Since v4l2_ctrl_find will lock the handler you have to be careful where you
637use it. For example, this is not a good idea:
638
639 struct v4l2_ctrl_handler ctrl_handler;
640
641 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&ctrl_handler, &video_ops, V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS, ...);
642 v4l2_ctrl_new_std(&ctrl_handler, &video_ops, V4L2_CID_CONTRAST, ...);
643
644...and in video_ops.s_ctrl:
645
646 case V4L2_CID_BRIGHTNESS:
647 contrast = v4l2_find_ctrl(&ctrl_handler, V4L2_CID_CONTRAST);
648 ...
649
650When s_ctrl is called by the framework the ctrl_handler.lock is already taken, so
651attempting to find another control from the same handler will deadlock.
652
653It is recommended not to use this function from inside the control ops.
654
655
656Inheriting Controls
657===================
658
659When one control handler is added to another using v4l2_ctrl_add_handler, then
660by default all controls from one are merged to the other. But a subdev might
661have low-level controls that make sense for some advanced embedded system, but
662not when it is used in consumer-level hardware. In that case you want to keep
663those low-level controls local to the subdev. You can do this by simply
664setting the 'is_private' flag of the control to 1:
665
666 static const struct v4l2_ctrl_config ctrl_private = {
667 .ops = &ctrl_custom_ops,
668 .id = V4L2_CID_...,
669 .name = "Some Private Control",
670 .type = V4L2_CTRL_TYPE_INTEGER,
671 .max = 15,
672 .step = 1,
673 .is_private = 1,
674 };
675
676 ctrl = v4l2_ctrl_new_custom(&foo->ctrl_handler, &ctrl_private, NULL);
677
678These controls will now be skipped when v4l2_ctrl_add_handler is called.
679
680
681V4L2_CTRL_TYPE_CTRL_CLASS Controls
682==================================
683
684Controls of this type can be used by GUIs to get the name of the control class.
685A fully featured GUI can make a dialog with multiple tabs with each tab
686containing the controls belonging to a particular control class. The name of
687each tab can be found by querying a special control with ID <control class | 1>.
688
689Drivers do not have to care about this. The framework will automatically add
690a control of this type whenever the first control belonging to a new control
691class is added.
692
693
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694Proposals for Extensions
695========================
696
697Some ideas for future extensions to the spec:
698
6991) Add a V4L2_CTRL_FLAG_HEX to have values shown as hexadecimal instead of
700decimal. Useful for e.g. video_mute_yuv.
701
7022) It is possible to mark in the controls array which controls have been
703successfully written and which failed by for example adding a bit to the
704control ID. Not sure if it is worth the effort, though.