Arducam 16MP autofocus always fails scan from lens 0-10 on Raspberry Pi 4 libcamera

Raspberry Pi Cameras
1

Hi everyone. I’m using an Arducam 16 MP Autofocus Camera on a Raspberry Pi and autofocus just won’t work. libcamera-vid and libcamera-still capture fine at the full raw resolution (4654x3496, using --mode 4656:3496), but whenever I try autofocus it always fails.

With --autofocus-mode continuous (and also with auto) pressing ‘f’ makes the lens scan from position 0 all the way to 10, then the scan fails. It does this whether the target is about 2 m away or very close at ~11 cm. The image never comes out sharp and %afstate shows failed.

2

Thanks for the report. That scan-from-0-to-10-and-fail pattern is useful info. Can you post your full environment (Pi model, OS/kernel) and the exact libcamera parameters you’re using? Also, have you been able to get a sharp image any other way, e.g. by moving the focus manually?

3

Sure:

  • Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB
  • Raspberry Pi OS 11 (Bullseye), kernel 5.10.92-v7l+
  • Arducam 16 MP Autofocus Camera
  • libcamera-vid / libcamera-still

I’ve been using these parameters:

–autofocus-mode continuous (also tried auto)
–mode 4656:3496
–info-text with %afstate, %lp and %focus

I also tried the Pivariety FocuserExample.py for manual control, and if I move the focus manually I can get a very sharp image. So the lens itself can focus — the libcamera autofocus scan is what’s failing.

4

Since manual focus works, the optics and focus motor are probably fine, so we need to see the full camera state. Could you generate a camera bug report and attach it here? Reboot first, then run:

wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/ketai-dhr/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/tools/arducam-camera-bug-report
chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report
./arducam-camera-bug-report

That produces arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Please attach that file.

5

Done. I rebooted and ran the tool using exactly those commands, and it generated arducam-bug-report.txt. I’ve attached it to this post.

6

Thanks, I’ve got the report. While I’m going through it, can you also check this thread about the 64MP autofocus over libcamera-still? It covers a similar scan-fails-from-0-to-10 situation and may be relevant to the 16MP behavior:

7

Thanks, I’ll read through that. Is there anything in the bug report that stands out so far?

8

Nothing conclusive yet — I’m still analyzing the report. The key point so far is that the camera and focus motor work (manual focus is sharp), but the libcamera autofocus scan consistently fails from position 0 to 10 and never locks. That makes it likely to be an autofocus scan/parameter issue rather than a hardware fault. For now, the workaround is to keep using Pivariety FocuserExample.py for manual focus. I’ll follow up once I’ve had a chance to go through the bug report and compare it against the 64MP thread.