Hi everyone, I’m having trouble with an Arducam 64MP Autofocus Camera for Raspberry Pi that doesn’t seem to work at all on first use. My setup is a Raspberry Pi CM4 running the latest Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit on a fresh image, with no Arducam software installed yet. I was expecting the camera to at least be recognized in some form, but there’s basically nothing. The only thing I see is a red dot on the camera board. Does that red dot mean the hardware is dead?
Welcome, and thanks for the details. Before we jump to a hardware failure, can you double-check the ribbon cable? Make sure it’s seated properly in the connector and that the contacts are facing the correct way. Have you also tried another cable or another camera on the same CM4?
I already checked the cable and even swapped in another one, and I’m pretty sure the orientation is correct. I also tried a few known working Raspberry Pi cameras on the same CM4 and they all show up without issues — including a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, which is detected fine. So the CM4 and connector side seems okay; it’s specifically this Arducam that isn’t being detected.
That does narrow it down quite a bit. Can you run these commands and paste the output? I’d like to see what the system reports:
libcamera-hello
vcgencmd get_camera
dmesg
For dmesg, anything camera/i2c related would be useful.
Here’s what I get:
libcamera-hello → No camera available
vcgencmd get_camera → No camera available
dmesg → looks like there is no camera connected at all
I’ve also followed the Arducam userguide at libcamera and rpicam-apps - Arducam Wiki and tried tips from this forum thread: 64MP QuadCamera - No cameras available! - #9 by 702enigma — no luck so far.
Thanks for running those. Since you mentioned a fresh image — did you have Arducam software installed on that image, and did installing it change anything? On some of these cameras the libcamera config and dtoverlay need to be in place before it gets picked up.
Right now it’s a completely fresh image with no Arducam software. I did previously install the Arducam software on another image and it didn’t change anything, so I went back to a clean setup to rule that out.
Understood. Let’s get a proper diagnostic report so we can see what the kernel and I2C are actually detecting. Please reboot the device, 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
This will create an arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Please attach that file here.
Done. Here’s the Arducam bug report:
For comparison, I also ran the same steps with my Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, which is detected fine. That report is here:
arducam-bug-report_RPI_CAM.txt
And here are photos of the two setups:
Thanks for the reports and photos. Quick summary of where we are: the Arducam 64MP Autofocus Camera is still not detected. Both libcamera-hello and vcgencmd get_camera report ‘No camera available’, and dmesg shows no camera connected, even though the cable and CM4 connector are fine — other cameras, including a Camera Module 3, work on the same setup. We’re currently reviewing the bug report data to determine whether this is a hardware failure or a software/detection issue. We’ll follow up here once we’ve gone through the reports.