Hey PJ,
The mistakes are the poor documentation and consistent lack of response from official support people for almost two weeks. You also say things like this should be expected on the bleeding edge, looks like this board was released around two years ago. Even if it was bleeding edge I would expect far greater engagement as any feedback would be fed back in to any active development.
I only got traction on this issue after I raised the issue over on github and the fix Li Dayu provided was the same as over there so I falsely assumed it was the same person. I’ve no idea if they are also ackPeng who seems to have solved the issue, or if they just passed on their fix.
The reason I asked how long this hasn’t been working for is to get an idea of accuracy of confirming documentation, their own wiki claims that dual imx477 is supported. That means either it was working and tested at some point, since then there has been a regression in the driver, or it has never actually worked. There’s another post with a likely related question where the imx477 board isn’t working on cam0 on a different board, it’s likely the same issue. I see on that post you’d provided some feedback but no one else came forward to assist. That’s a definite pattern.
“Better than others” is relative, it’s also a moot point if that documentation isn’t actually valid. It’s like taking backups without testing them, just a false sense of security.
For reference, I used to be a Developer Support Engineer at Microsoft and worked with customers around the world in various time-zones and across countless cultures. It’s not an easy job but was a great learning experience, it’s also been the yardstick against which I measure others. When I was working there the documentation was dreadful too and I fixed it in the few places I had access to and also wrote up my case notes on a blog for others to find easier. Before you suggest they are able to provide a better support as they have more money, they consistently underfunded and understaffed all their teams and made our lives hell rather than helping us to help their customers. I learned as much about how not to treat people as I did about technical issues…
I can respect your loyalty and appreciate you reaching out to folks inside Seeed, that’s the only reason I stayed at MS as long as I did after all, but I don’t think you work for them so it shouldn’t be your job to do that on behalf of another customer. That isn’t how to run a support organisation that can be relied upon by another commercial entity.