Hi everyone, I’m having a weird issue with my Arducam 108MP camera. The live video feed shows up fine in the demo, but when I press ‘a’ to save a still image, the saved 108MP.jpg file comes out completely black. Has anyone else run into this?
Hey, welcome to the forum. Can you give me a bit more info about your setup? Which exact module are you using, what OS are you on, and which guide or instructions did you follow to get it running?
Sure. I’m on Windows. I thought it was the Arducam 108MP USB3.0 Evaluation Kit, and I followed the quick start guide at Quick Start Guide on Windows - Arducam Wiki. The preview works, it’s just the saved image that’s black.
Got it. Can you paste the exact command you’re running the Python demo with, and let me know if you have any logs or terminal output when saving? That’ll help narrow it down.
I don’t have any logs, unfortunately. I cloned the demo repo with: git clone -b Arducam108MPDemo GitHub - ArduCAM/ArducamUVCPythonDemo · GitHub. Then I run: python arducam_demo.py -W 1280 -H 720 --ccm --tuning-file arducam_108mp.json -F. The video feed is fine, then pressing ‘a’ saves to 108MP.jpg which is all black.
Thanks, that helps. Just to confirm—you’re on the Arducam108MPDemo branch, correct? I’ll dig into the code path for that branch.
Yes, that’s the branch I cloned.
Okay, I think I found the root cause. Looking at your setup, the module you actually have is the Arducam 108MP Motorized Focus USB 3.0 Camera Module, not the 108MP USB3.0 Evaluation Kit. They’re easy to mix up, but the demo code needs a different product type/variant parameter depending on which module you have. In arducam_demo.py on the Arducam108MPDemo branch, around line 109, there’s a value set to 2—that’s for the Evaluation Kit. For the Motorized Focus module it needs to be 5. Change that 2 to 5 and run it again. Here’s the reference location: ArducamUVCPythonDemo/arducam_demo.py at Arducam108MPDemo · ArduCAM/ArducamUVCPythonDemo · GitHub
That fixed it! I changed the value from 2 to 5 at line 109 and now the saved 108MP.jpg comes out correctly. Thanks so much for the help.
Glad it’s working. Just to wrap this up for future readers: the black JPEG was caused by the demo using the wrong product variant parameter for the Motorized Focus module. Changing line 109 from 2 to 5 in arducam_demo.py on the Arducam108MPDemo branch resolves it. The key takeaway is that the 108MP USB3.0 Evaluation Kit and the 108MP Motorized Focus USB 3.0 Camera Module need different parameter values in the demo script, so it’s worth double-checking exactly which module you have.