Developer Technical Documents

This page lists technical documentation relevant to CHDK development.

ARM Development

General ARM documentation

• Main ARM documentation site
• ARM Architecture Reference Manual

Covers register usage, addressing modes, detailed description of each instruction, including encoding.

• ARM® Developer Suite Version 1.2 Developer Guide

Covers procedure call standards, mixing ARM/Thumb, mixing C/ASM, exceptions, and some useful stuff about ROM. Written for users of the arm SDK, but still relevant.

• GNUARM.org home

GNU arm toolchain, also a lot of useful general docs in the resources section.

ARM946ES documentation

Based on strings in the ROM, and reading the system control processor registers most CHDK supported cameras appear to be based on this core. See this thread Getting CPU configuration from CP15 for more information.

• ARM946E-S (Rev1)System-on-Chip DSP enhanced processor Product Overview Revision: r1p1
• ARM946E-S™ Technical Reference Manual
• ARM9E-S Core™ Technical Reference Manual Revision: r2p1

Design rule for Camera File system (DCF)

This standard specifies the layout of the DCIM directory.

• Overview on wikipedia
• Design rule for Camera File system Version 1.0 PDF

note: This is version 1.0, which is outdated. The latest version is available for purchase from JETA

Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP)

This is the protocol used for camera USB transfer.

• Overview on wikipedia

VxWorks

Most non-DryOS cameras appear to use some variant of VxWorks 5.x

• Overview on wikipedia
• Tornado online manuals

Includes VxWorks 5 developer documentation and API reference.

• Wind river home

Mostly fluff, requires login for technical documentation.

Canon Digital Camera Software Developers Kit

Current Canon SDK Versions as of July 8, 2008 (requires proper access)

• PS-ReC SDK 1.1.0d/CD-SDK 7.3 for PowerShot digital cameras
• EDSDK 2.4/RC-SDK 8.4 for EOS digital cameras

• EDSDK - support remote control, raw image conversion and downloading from select EOS Digital SLRs with DIGIC III or DIGIC II processors, starting with the EOS-1D Mark II and continuing through to the EOS Rebel XSi and XS.
• RC-SDK - supports remote control, raw image conversion and downloading from most EOS Digital SLRs introduced before the EOS 30D.
• PS-ReC SDK - supports remote control including video out with the PowerShot G9, G7, S5 IS, S3 IS, S80, SX100 IS, A640 and A620 models exclusively.
• CD-SDK - supports downloading with all USB PowerShots released before 6/30/2005. Remote control and video out are supported with some of these models.
• RD-SDK - supports raw image conversion with select USB PowerShots.