Grain Media 8136S / 8138S are Low Cost HD IP Camera SoCs

A few times, my readers told me they really like comments on this blog, and they liked to check recent comments on the left sidebar, and some even subscribed to the Comments RSS Feed, although it might quite busy at times, especially during giveaways. Recently, an interesting conversation started in the comments section about low cost IP camera chips by Grain Media 8136S and 8138S SoCs respectively supporting 720p and 1080p video recording, and cheap enough to make a sub-$10 IP camera board (BoM cost).

GM8138/GM8138S Block Diagram (Click to Enlarge)
GM8138/GM8138S Block Diagram (Click to Enlarge)

Beside the maximum resolution supported, GM8136S and GM8138S are mostly similar except the later also supports Gigabit Ethernet against Fast Ethernet for the lower end version, different clock speeds, and some other (minor?) differences. There’s also GM8135S with 512 Mbit RAM (SiP) against 1Gbit RAM (SiP) for GM8136S, and GM8138 including a DDR controller for external memory, while GM8138S including 1Gbit RAM (SiP).

Grain Media GM813x specifications:

  • Processor
    • GM8136S / GM8135S – 32-bit ARM CPU core up to 600MHz
    • GM8138S / GM8138 – 32-bit ARM CPU core with 256KB L2 cache @ 400 MHz (GM8136S) or 800 MHz (GM8138)
  • Memory Interface
    • GM8136S: SiP 1Gb DDR; GM8135S: SiP 512Mb DDR
    • GM8138: 16-bit DDRII/III SDRAM interface; GM8138S: SiP 1Gb DDR
    • SPI NOR/NAND flash boot
  • Video Codec
    • GM8136S: 720P@60fps; GM8135S: 720P@45fps
    • GM8138(S): 1080p@45 fps
  • Video Input
    • MIPI, Parallel, Sub-LVDS. GM8138(S) only: Hispi
    • YUV x 2 for 2-channel 720P; GM8138(S) only: – 4*960H demux
  • Video Capture
    • BT.656 input (up to 148.5 MHz)
    • BT.1120 input (up to 148.5 MHz)
    • Support 54MHz/108MHz and 72MHz/144MHz byte/frame interleave modes
  • Image Signal Processing – Temporal and spatial 3D-Denoise filtering; Digital-WDR; WDR sensor; tone mapping; low lux sensitivity to ISO6400; embedded IVS engine
  • Display Interface
    • Built-in BT.1120 digital output; GM8138(S) only: RGB digital output
    • Support composite/parallel up to FHD output
  • Peripherals
    • GM8136S/GM8135S: 10/100M Ethernet MAC; GM8138(S): Gigabit Ethernet MAC
    • USB 2.0 OTG, USB 1.1 Device (Note: The latter is not listed for GM8138(S)).
    • 2x SDIO
    • I²S
    • I²C, UART
    • GPIO
  • Operating Voltage
    • GM8136S/GM8135S – Core: 1.1 V; DDR: 1.5/1.8 V; I/O: 3.3 V
    • GM8138(S) – Core: 1.15V; • DDR: 1.5 V; I/O: 3.3 V
  • Package
    • GM8136S/GM8135S – 128-pin EPADLQFP
    • GM8138(S) – GM8138: 256-pin BGA;  GM8138S: 196-pin BGA

There’s not much information about software support and devkits on the company website, and that’s an understatement, but the company allegedly provides a (Linux?) SDK and an hardware platform for less than $1,000, with the price including factory support.

If you’d like to evaluate the platform before spending money on the SDK, and possibly working around high MOQ requirements of distributors, you could purchase a camera based on Grain Media SoCs for evaluation such as TVT Digital TD-9433T IP camera featuring GM8138S SoC.

TD-9433T IP Camera
TD-9433T IP Camera

GM8136S SoC combined with Espressif ESP8089 Wi-Fi SoC should cost less than $6 in larger quantities, and for smaller quantities, GM8136S should cost around $7. You’ll also need to add an SPI flash to have a complete design. I don’t have price information for GM8138(S) solutions.

You can find some more information on Grain Media’s GM8136S / GM8135S and GM8138S / GM8138 product pages.

[Update: A company called SAC Group recently launched IP camera solutions based on Grain Media 813x SoCs. The link (in Chinese) shows some combinations of chips for their solutions (flash memory, DDR3 chips, drivers, IR LEDs and so, as well as the board pictured below.

GM813x_IP_Camera_Board

They also mentioned Grain Media GM8139 chip that supports 1080p60 encoding]

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7 Comments
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Jon Smirl
8 years ago

The SDK is Linux based and the environment is buildroot. It comes with an RTSP server app. The CPU is ARM9. ARM9 is fine since all of the heavy lifting is done by dedicated hardware. The chips support about 20 different image sensors including many high end Sony ones.

The SDKs include all of the software, development hardware with choice of a sensor board and factory support. It is factory level development hardware with every feature of the chip exposed, not just a camera board.

mule
mule
8 years ago

You can get a Huawei Hisilicon Hi3516a (realtime 1080p@60fps H265 encoding) dev board w/ CMOS sensor+ SDK off Taobao for 330 CNY / 53 USD.

http://www.ipcameramodule.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Hi3516A-Professional-HD-IP-Camera-SoC-Brief-Data-Sheet.pdf
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=44958962124&_u=323eo9vh7b0f

Jon Smirl
8 years ago

@mule Yes, and the SDK license to change the HiSilicon programming is $4,000. And that is if they will even sell it to you.

mule
mule
8 years ago

@Jon Smirl

Not really. Like I said, the Taobao vendor above provides the SDK for a nominal 1 CNY; you can probably get it for free if buying the dev board. Else, you can just google “Hi3516A_V100R001C01SPC030.rar”

Ihor
Ihor
8 years ago

I can’t find Hi3516A_V100R001C01SPC030.rar for free download. Can you help me? I don’t know any asian language and can read what i must to do for downloading, for example on http://pan.baidu.com/wap/share/home?uk=2348946217&third=0

onebir
onebir
8 years ago

@Ihor
Looks like you need a baidu account 🙁

Jon Smirl
8 years ago
Khadas VIM4 SBC