Arducam B0444 IMX462 camera fails to start streaming on Raspberry Pi 4 (Bookworm 64-bit)

Raspberry Pi Cameras
1

Hey everyone, having some trouble getting my Arducam B0444 (the 2MP IMX462 model) working on a Raspberry Pi 4 running 64-bit Bookworm OS.

I added dtoverlay=imx462 to /boot/firmware/config.txt and rebooted, but whenever I try to capture an image with either libcamera-still or rpicam-still, I get this:

ERROR V4L2 v4l2_videodevice.cpp:1994 /dev/video0[13:cap]: Failed to start streaming: Input/output error

Camera is connected properly as far as I can tell. Anyone seen this before?

2

That I/O error usually points to a communication problem between the Pi and the sensor. Can you run sudo dmesg | tail right after attempting a capture and paste what you see? The kernel logs should give us a better idea of what’s failing.

3

Sure, here’s what I get from dmesg:

[ 9228.775443] imx290 10-001a: Error writing reg 0x303a: -5
[ 9228.775497] imx290 10-001a: Could not set init registers
[ 9228.775502] imx290 10-001a: Start stream failed
[ 9228.775524] unicam fe801000.csi: stream on failed in subdev

Also attaching a screenshot of the full terminal output:

imx462-error.jpeg

Weird thing is I’m seeing “imx290” in there — that’s not even the right sensor, is it?

4

That’s exactly the problem. The kernel is loading the imx290 driver instead of the proper IMX462 driver, and that’s why those register writes are failing — the imx290 driver doesn’t know how to talk to an IMX462 sensor, so you’re getting -5 (I/O error) on register 0x303a.

The root cause is the device tree overlay you’re using. dtoverlay=imx462 in your config.txt is forcing the wrong driver. For the Arducam B0444 IMX462, you need to use the arducam-pivariety overlay instead.

Here’s what to do:

  1. Edit /boot/firmware/config.txt and replace dtoverlay=imx462 with dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety
  2. Reboot the Pi so the new overlay takes effect
5

Okay, that makes sense. I’ll switch the overlay and reboot. But do I also need to install anything else? I’ve seen mentions of an Arducam-specific libcamera package floating around.

6

Yes, good catch — after fixing the overlay, you’ll need the Arducam-flavored libcamera build. The stock libcamera doesn’t include the tuning files and support for the pivariety camera modules.

Follow the getting-started section in the official guide here:

https://docs.arducam.com/Raspberry-Pi-Camera/Pivariety-Camera/Libcamera-User-Guide/#getting-started

Once you’ve gone through the installation, reboot one more time and test with:

rpicam-still

That should give you a clean capture without the streaming error.

7

That did it! Switched to dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety, rebooted, went through the libcamera install guide, and rpicam-still works perfectly now. No more imx290 errors in dmesg either.

For anyone else hitting this — if you see imx290 in your kernel logs when you’re using an IMX462 camera, double-check your overlay. The Arducam module definitely does not want dtoverlay=imx462. Thanks for the help!