Hi, I’m having trouble with my Arducam 64MP Hawkeye camera on a Raspberry Pi and I can’t get it to work at all. When I run libcamera-still -t 0, I hear the autofocus clicking and a black preview window flashes open for just a split second, then nothing. I’m also getting an input/output error. This is on a fresh Raspberry OS install, no rpi-update or anything like that. I’ve already tried several other Raspberry Pis, different ribbon cables, and a few different power bricks, and it’s the same every time. Any idea what’s going on?
Thanks for the detailed report, that helps a lot. Before we go further, can you run our diagnostic script so we can see what’s happening on the i2c side of things? Please do the following and then send a screenshot of the terminal after it finishes:
git clone GitHub - edward-ardu/tools: Some small programs to help detect errors · GitHub
cd tools
./register_debug_tool.sh
Once we see that output we can figure out whether the camera’s i2c transfer signal is stable.
Okay, I ran everything you asked. The camera still doesn’t work. Here’s exactly what I did (see screenshot 1.png):
git clone GitHub - edward-ardu/tools: Some small programs to help detect errors · GitHub
cd tools
./register_debug_tool.sh
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
libcamera-still -t 0
After I took the screenshot I rebooted the Pi and ran the bug report again. Still just the clicking autofocus, black window for a split second, and the input/output error. The error message plus dmesg are attached, and the bug report output is in arducam-bug-report.txt.
Just to repeat the environment: fresh Raspberry OS, no rpi-update, tested on several other Pis, different ribbon cables, and multiple power bricks. Same result everywhere.
Attachments:
arducam-bug-report (1).txt
Appreciate you running all that. One important thing though: the script needs to be re-executed after rebooting the Pi, not before. The whole point of this script is to test whether the camera’s i2c transfer signal is stable after a fresh boot, so the results from before a reboot won’t tell us much.
Could you please:
- Reboot your Pi.
- Re-execute the script right after the reboot.
- Send us the screenshot of the terminal.
That should give us a clean read on the i2c signal.
Alright, rebooted the Pi and re-ran the script right after it came up:
git clone GitHub - edward-ardu/tools: Some small programs to help detect errors · GitHub
cd tools
./register_debug_tool.sh
Screenshot of the terminal is attached (after_reboot.png). Unfortunately the camera still does not work - same black preview flash, same clicking autofocus, same input/output error. Nothing changed.
For reference this is still a fresh Raspberry OS install with no rpi-update, and I’ve now re-tested across several other Raspberry Pis, different ribbon cables, and different power bricks. Same behavior on all of them.
Attachment:
Thanks for re-running it post-reboot and for the screenshot. Here’s where we stand: the script is specifically there to test whether the camera’s i2c transfer signal is stable, and the goal was to rule that in or out as the cause of the input/output error. So far the camera still isn’t working on your setup even after a clean boot with a fresh OS, and you’ve already eliminated the Pi itself, the ribbon cables, and the power supply as variables by swapping all of them.
We’re still working through the i2c signal side of this and don’t have a confirmed root cause yet. I’ll keep digging into the diagnostic output you sent and follow up here once I have something more concrete to test. If you can leave the setup as-is in the meantime, that would help so we’re comparing results on the same hardware.