A distributed camera acquisition and timing system integrated into an agricultural machinery retrofit, connecting 24 cameras to one NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin controller.
*Based on a customer deployment. Customer details are omitted.
01 | The Challenge: 24 Cameras, Eight Direct Inputs
A customer retrofitting agricultural machinery for autonomous operation needed one controller to handle 24 cameras, alongside LiDAR, GNSS, an IMU and motor control. The AMR BOX controller, built around NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin, provides eight direct GMSL camera inputs, leaving 16 additional cameras to be connected through another acquisition path.
Connectivity was only half of the problem. The machine moves while it images the field, so frames captured at different instants show the scene from different positions. The cameras needed to capture in step with each other and share a time base with the rest of the machine's sensors.
02 | Distributing Camera Acquisition with Vision BOX
Albatron built the system from three units. The AMR BOX, an autonomous retrofit controller based on Jetson AGX Orin, connects eight GMSL cameras directly.
The other 16 cameras live in two Vision BOX units mounted at the front and rear of the machine. Each Vision BOX integrates eight MIPI cameras and an FPGA in a single enclosure, with the cameras wired to the FPGA over short internal cables. Each unit sends its camera data to the AMR BOX over its own 10G SFP+ fiber link, so two optical cables replace 16 individual camera runs across the machine.
03 | One Time Base, from GNSS to Every Camera
Timing starts at a u-blox F9P GNSS receiver built into the AMR BOX. The receiver supplies time-of-day information and a pulse-per-second (PPS) signal to the Jetson module, which serves as PTP/gPTP grandmaster (IEEE 1588 and 802.1AS) on the controller's Ethernet and fiber ports.
From there, each group of devices is synchronized through the path that suits its interface:
| Devices | How they are synchronized |
|---|---|
| GMSL cameras | PPS is routed to the deserializers, which generate frame sync for the eight directly connected cameras, at 30 Hz by default. |
| Vision BOX cameras | Each Vision BOX synchronizes its FPGA clock with the AMR BOX over PTP. The FPGA uses this shared time base to trigger its eight MIPI cameras, aligning the start of exposure across the group. |
| Other devices | PTP over the 1G Ethernet ports for network sensors such as LiDAR, plus a time-of-day output (NMEA GPRMC) on an M8 connector for equipment that accepts a serial time message. |
Inside each Vision BOX, the FPGA handles both jobs: aggregating eight camera streams onto one optical link and timing their capture.
04 | What Albatron Delivered
Albatron designed and delivered the AMR BOX and both Vision BOX units as one system, including the timing chain that links them. The customer integrates the LiDAR and motor controllers into the machine through the AMR BOX's PTP-capable Ethernet and CAN interfaces.
05 | Applying the Architecture to Multi-Sensor Machinery
On a machine with cameras spread from front to rear, the camera interface decides where acquisition happens and how much cabling crosses the frame. Placing acquisition in units next to the cameras and linking them to the controller by fiber lets the camera count grow beyond the controller's direct inputs. Carrying PTP over the same fiber keeps every camera group on one time base.
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Albatron develops custom AI controllers and FPGA hardware for robotics, agricultural machinery and multi-sensor edge AI systems. Contact us about your camera connectivity, timing architecture and system integration requirements.