| > What does the DRM prevent, specifically? Any use of the camera ribbon cable interface by any non-licensed camera? > Apparently, yes. This comment[0](2019) explains it slightly more. Evidently the ribbon cable ("CSI interface") can be used by pretty much anything...as long as that thing is not a camera / doesn't need the usual on-board image processing. This isn't accurate, the only thing they do is limit specific sensors from being used unless there is a matching authentication chip on the module, because those specific sensors are the ones they have manufactured camera modules with. So for example the Pi Camera v2 module uses an imx219 sensor from sony and an authentication chip that the Pi firmware can check to verify the module was actually made by the Raspberry Pi company. If you buy a 3rd party imx219 camera module (which would not have that authentication chip), it will not work on the regular Pi boards (but it will work with the Pi compute module boards because they don't do the authentication chip verification). There have been plenty of 3rd party camera modules with entirely different sensors that work on the Pi for years, though with quirks related to the closed source drivers, but the modern libcamera stack on the Pi is explicitly designed to enable 3rd party camera modules. |
It's really disappointing. I have wondered if there are any very-high-quality cameras you can connect to a Pi, but found none. I guess this is why.