Forum - CMOS sensor not initialising after connect

Hi, I'm the EE charged with the electronics part of our Miniscopes project (NIN, The Netherlands).

After some initial struggles, last Friday we were very excited to see the first pictures coming from one of our Miniscopes. Soon after, we reached a total score of 15 working CMOS sensors and 10 DAQs.

However, something peculiar is happening, and I hope there is a known cure for it.

When the coax from the CMOS PCB is connected to the DAQ PCB, the Data Link LED lights. Then I start MiniScopeControl.exe and click Connect.

The msCam window starts up with a flat grey screen. At this point, no live video is present and the Scope Min/Max levels are identical and stay constant. However, the LED brightness can be controlled by moving the Excitation LED slider.

To get live video, I then have to manually reset the MT9V032C12STM CMOS sensor, by briefly striking its pin 31 with a grounded wire. A more controlled way is, to do this with a 100nF capacitor instead of a solid ground. This trick only works after the connection with MiniScopeControl.exe has already been established.

As an aside, the Exposure and Gain sliders have no effect on picture brightness in msCam. But if I understood well, this is a post processing function performed in the PC.

All CMOS sensors we have are behaving the same, also when combined with different DAQ boards.

Should the sensor chip be re-initialized over I2C the moment the connection with MiniScopeControl.exe is made, and are we dealing with a partial I2C malfunction?

Any advice is much appreciated.

Regards, Mike