Hi everyone. I’ve been trying for days to get my Arducam 5MP 1080p Pan Tilt Zoom PTZ camera working on a Raspberry Pi 4, but the camera just never gets detected. I’ve tried many times and never got it to work. Running Raspberry Pi OS and the camera doesn’t show up at all. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?
Hi, sorry to hear it’s not working. Let’s start by grabbing a diagnostic report so we can see what’s happening on the system. Please reboot your Pi, then run these commands:
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 will output an arducam-bug-report.txt file in the current directory. Send that over and we’ll take a look.
- Dion, Arducam Support
Thanks. I tried to run the downloaded tool but I’m getting a permission error, something like ‘no such file or directory’. Not sure what I did wrong.
That usually means the download didn’t land in the directory you’re running the command from. Can you go to your home directory and check whether the file is actually there?
cd
ls -l
Look for arducam-camera-bug-report in the listing and check its permissions. Let me know what you see.
Okay, I got it to run this time, but now the bug report file it created is empty. The arducam-bug-report.txt file has nothing in it.
An empty report usually points to a corrupted or incomplete download of the script. Let’s remove it and redo the whole thing cleanly. Delete the arducam-camera-bug-report script from your Pi, then:
- Reboot the device
- 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 should give you a proper arducam-bug-report.txt. Send it over once it’s generated.
Done, I re-ran everything. The report generated this time, but the camera still isn’t being detected.
Thanks for the report. Looking at it, the most likely culprit is that the ov5647 overlay isn’t enabled. Without that overlay, the Pi won’t pick up the camera. Please run:
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
And add this line under the [all] section at the bottom:
dtoverlay=ov5647
Then reboot your Pi so it takes effect. You can also refer to the quick start guide here for using this module:
https://docs.arducam.com/Raspberry-Pi-Camera/Pan-Tilt-Zoom-Camera/quick-start/
I added the overlay and rebooted, but I still can’t access the camera. When I run libcamera-hello it shows an error on the display. I’ve attached the error output.
Got it. Since the configuration has changed, could you re-run the bug report script and send me the new bug-report file? The fresh report will show the current state and help pin down what libcamera-hello is complaining about.
Sure, let me run it again and I’ll get back to you.
Also, while you’re in there, double-check /boot/config.txt. Make sure dtoverlay=ov5647 is the only overlay entry left in there - if there are other dtoverlay lines or leftover text, remove them. Can you just leave dtoverlay=ov5647 only and delete the other two entries? Having multiple or conflicting overlay entries can stop the camera from initializing correctly.