Arducam 12MP 477P Motorized Focus camera not working on RB5 - camera server died

1

Hi everyone, I’m having trouble getting an Arducam 12MP 477P Motorized Focus High Quality Camera to work on an RB5 platform. The weird part is that the non-motorized Arducam High Quality Camera (12.3MP 1/2.3" 477P HQ Camera Module with 6mm CS-Mount Lens) works fine on the same setup. The motorized one has never worked. I’m running a basic gstreamer pipeline and it dies with: camera_event_callback: Camera server has died ! Has anyone seen this before?

2

Thanks for the report. Just to make sure I understand the platform correctly: when you say RB5, do you mean a Raspberry Pi 5? Also, can you confirm both cameras are connected the same way, and it’s only the motorized focus variant that’s failing?

3

Sorry, RB5 isn’t a Raspberry Pi 5. It’s an RB5 Development Kit. I have a custom extended board connecting the camera over MIPI with 4 lanes. The previous 12.3MP 477P HQ module with 6mm CS-mount lens works on this board, but the motorized focus one doesn’t. It has never worked properly. I just used a basic gstreamer pipeline, nothing special, and got the camera server died error.

4

Got it, that’s helpful. Since the standard 477P works on the same 4-lane MIPI board but the motorized version doesn’t, we need to see what’s happening on the control bus. Could you capture the I2C communication waveform when the motorized camera is connected? We’d like to compare it with what the working HQ camera shows. If you can share the exact gstreamer command line too, that would help rule out pipeline issues.

5

I’ll try to get the I2C capture. The gstreamer command is just a basic pipeline, nothing custom, basically open the camera and display. The log line is exactly: camera_event_callback: Camera server has died ! I’ll report back once I have the waveform.

6

Thanks. So the current status is: platform is the RB5 Development Kit with a custom extended board and MIPI 4-lane connection. The non-motorized 12.3MP 477P HQ Camera Module with 6mm CS-Mount Lens works, but the 12MP 477P Motorized Focus High Quality Camera fails with ‘camera_event_callback: Camera server has died !’ in a basic gstreamer pipeline. Root cause is still under investigation. Next step is to capture the I2C communication waveform from the camera connection so we can compare the working and non-working modules. Until we have that capture, I don’t have a fix or workaround yet.