Hi, I’ve got an Arducam USB camera hooked up to my Raspberry Pi 5 and the output only shows two shades of green and pink instead of full color. It’s like the color channels are completely off. Everything else seems to work, just the colors are wrong. Anyone know what could cause this?
Thanks for reaching out. To help narrow this down, can you tell me the exact camera model, what Pi you’re using, and which application you’re viewing the feed through? If you can also grab a screenshot or a photo of what you’re seeing, that would be really useful.
Sure. The camera is the Arducam 1080P USB Camera Module, Low Light Low Distortion Lightburn Camera, 2MP CMOS IMX323 Mini UVC USB2.0, and it’s running on a Raspberry Pi 5. I have VLC installed. I also tried i net but it didn’t change anything. Here’s what the output looks like:
Thanks, that photo helps. Just so you know where we are: we haven’t pinned down the root cause yet. A green/pink-only image could come from the camera hardware, the driver, or the color format handling in the software you’re currently using. To isolate it, can you open the camera directly in VLC on the Pi 5? That will tell us whether the issue follows the camera/driver or only shows up in your current app. Also send any example pictures of the issue you get from that test.
I’ve got VLC installed but I haven’t actually opened the camera with it yet. What’s the right way to access the camera in VLC on the Pi 5?
First, make sure VLC is installed on the Pi 5. You can run: sudo apt install vlc. Once that’s done, open VLC and go to Media → Open Capture Device, select the video device for the camera, and it should pull the raw UVC stream. Then take a screenshot of what VLC shows and send it over, along with example pictures from your current app showing the green/pink issue.
Okay, I’ll install/run it and test the camera through VLC. I’ll post the screenshots here once I’ve got them.
Sounds good. The reason for the VLC test is that VLC uses the standard UVC pipeline, so it gives us a clean baseline. If colors come out correct in VLC, the green/pink output is most likely a software or color-format issue in the application you were using. If it’s still green/pink in VLC, that points more toward the camera hardware or the driver on the Pi 5. Let me know what you see when you’ve tested it.