Beyond mobile use cases, flash control is increasingly important in industrial imaging applications. Precise timing is essential for tasks such as barcode scanning and machine vision. However, controlling camera flashes in embedded Linux systems has long been (and still is) a hardware-specific challenge that is often only supported by the downstream drivers.

This talk presents the current efforts to improve flash and strobe control in the Linux kernel, with a focus on the V4L2 subsystem. It begins with an overview of flash timing concepts and their key components, followed by an introduction to the existing V4L2 controls and the latest extensions under development. These enhancements aim to standardize flash behavior across platforms and pave the way for a clean and robust user-space integration.