Hi, hoping someone can help. I have a Raspberry Pi Camera (model B0176) running on a Raspberry Pi 4B. I followed the paper quick-start that came with the camera. When I enter the codes to enable the motorized options, the camera stops working completely. The only way to get it working again is to do a full reset of the whole Pi. The print on those instructions is so tiny I could barely read it, so I probably made some entry errors. It worked before but somehow quit working. I’ve done a bunch of internet research and it looks like almost everyone has the same problem as me. Any ideas where to start?
Arducam B0176 camera stops working after enabling motorized options on Raspberry Pi 4B OctoPi Buster
Hi, thanks for the details. This usually comes down to the OS/camera stack version. Please burn a fresh Bullseye OS image and set it up from scratch instead of running an OS update in place. Specifically, do NOT run this command:
sudo apt install update
That has been causing the camera to drop out for a lot of people. Once you have a clean Bullseye image, follow the quick-start guide here:
https://docs.arducam.com/Raspberry-Pi-Camera/Motorized-Focus-Camera/quick-start/
With a clean Bullseye image and the guide followed step by step, the motorized focus commands should work. Let me know how it goes.
Thanks, but I think there’s a bigger issue here. The most stable version of OctoPi runs on Buster, not Bullseye. I’m running OctoPi for my 3D printer, so I can’t just swap the whole OS. As far as I can tell, this is a plug-and-play camera where some of the advertised features won’t work at all until OctoPi gets a stable Bullseye release.
Environment:
- Platform: Raspberry Pi 4B
- Product: Raspberry Pi Camera, model B0176
- Instruction followed: the paper that came with the camera
- Product status: it worked, but somehow quit working
What happens: when I enter the codes to allow the motorized options, the camera stops working completely. I have to reset the entire Pi to get it back, and I don’t dare try it again. The print on the instructions is nearly impossible to read, so I probably made some entry errors too.
No logs to share yet. The command that comes up in the threads is sudo apt install update, and the doc link is:
https://docs.arducam.com/Raspberry-Pi-Camera/Motorized-Focus-Camera/quick-start/
Can you give me detailed instructions, including which plugins to install, and confirm whether this camera can actually do what it says on the product page?
You’re right, and thanks for laying it out so clearly. The most stable OctoPi release is on Buster, not Bullseye. Here’s the background on why that matters.
The Raspberry Pi camera stack moved from the original MMAL closed-source framework to libcamera, and libcamera is mainly released/updated on the Bullseye system for Pi3 and Pi4. We’ve updated our cameras to the PiVariety version so they stay compatible with libcamera, and once Bullseye is updated we’ll update our driver against the latest kernel version. OctoPrint has a Bullseye pre-release, but it’s been a long time with no update, and on Buster the kernel version is already very low.
Root cause for your case: OctoPi does not pre-install libcamera, and its original mjpeg-streamer server can’t pull images from the libcamera stack. Almost all Arducam cameras need to use libcamera, so it’s not easy to use the camera on the stock OctoPi system. To get it working you’d have to recompile libcamera and modify mjpeg-streamer so it can grab frames from the libcamera stack.
What we’re going to do: we’ll perform the required recompilation and modifications on the Buster system and test it. On OctoPi, the best route once we’ve finished testing is for us to send the whole image so it can be used directly. We’ll update the documentation as soon as we can. If you need more help, just reply here. Bottom line: this is a compatibility gap between the camera stack and OctoPi, not a fault with your camera, so hang in there if you can.
Got it, that explanation makes sense. So the real hold-up is OctoPrint lagging behind — the stable OctoPi is still on Buster while the camera needs the Bullseye libcamera stack, and the stock mjpeg-streamer can’t read from libcamera. I understand now why my motorized option codes were breaking things.
I’m satisfied with that explanation and I’ll wait for the ready-to-use image and the documentation update. Thanks for taking the time to explain it properly.
Quick recap for anyone landing on this thread later:
Setup: motorized-focus Raspberry Pi Camera, model B0176, on a Raspberry Pi 4B running OctoPi.
Symptom: entering the codes to enable the motorized options makes the camera stop working entirely, and a full Pi reset is needed to recover.
Cause: OctoPi’s stable release is on Buster, which doesn’t ship libcamera, and the stock mjpeg-streamer server can’t read frames from the libcamera stack that Arducam cameras rely on (the Pi camera stack moved from MMAL to libcamera with Bullseye). On Buster the kernel is also quite old, and the OctoPrint Bullseye pre-release hasn’t been updated in a long time.
Status: there’s no out-of-the-box fix on stock Buster OctoPi right now — it needs libcamera recompiled and mjpeg-streamer patched to grab frames from libcamera. We’re doing that work and testing a complete, ready-to-use image for OctoPi, and the quick-start doc will be updated when it’s available.
If you’re on a plain Raspberry Pi OS setup instead of OctoPi, burn a fresh Bullseye image and skip sudo apt install update. We’ll post an update here once the tested image and the revised documentation are ready.