Hi everyone, I’m stuck with my Arducam Camarray Hat. Running libcamera-hello just fails with an error every time and I can’t get any preview. Has anyone run into this before?
Hey, let’s take a look. Can you tell me a bit about your setup? What Pi model, what cameras, and does the system see a video device?
It’s a Camarray Hat setup, and the camera shows up as /dev/video0. I’ve been following this guide: Quick Start Guide for Arducam CamArray HAT Kit - Arducam Wiki
Okay, first let’s rule out config issues. Can you check /boot/config.txt? Make sure camera_auto_detect is disabled and the correct overlay is loaded for your sensor.
I opened it with sudo nano /boot/config.txt.
In there, set camera_auto_detect=0 and add dtoverlay=imx708. Save and reboot.
Did that. Set camera_auto_detect=0, added dtoverlay=imx708, saved and rebooted. Still the exact same error.
Alright, let’s increase the timeout. There’s a known picamera2 issue around timeouts. Try adding camera_timeout_value_ms: 10000 to your config - see [BUG]latest picamera2/libcamera version causes timeouts for externally triggered HQ camera · Issue #748 · raspberrypi/picamera2 · GitHub
Tried that too. Still failing. Here are the logs I’m getting:
[0:34:54.902448592] [1945] WARN V4L2 v4l2_videodevice.cpp:2007 /dev/video0[18:cap]: Dequeue timer of 1000000.00us has expired!
[0:34:54.902534591] [1945] ERROR RPI pipeline_base.cpp:1333 Camera frontend has timed out!
[0:34:54.902549369] [1945] ERROR RPI pipeline_base.cpp:1334 Please check that your camera sensor connector is attached securely.
[0:34:54.902561961] [1945] ERROR RPI pipeline_base.cpp:1335 Alternatively, try another cable and/or sensor.
I also attached a picture of how everything is wired right now.
Thanks for the logs and the photo. Looking at the frontend timeout, it usually means the sensor isn’t being read properly. From the picture, it looks like you only have one camera connected to the Camarray Hat. Can you confirm how many cameras are plugged in?
Yeah, just one for now. I wanted to test with a single camera before wiring up all four.
That’s likely the issue. The Camarray Hat expects all four cameras to be connected to work correctly - a single camera alone isn’t enough and causes exactly this timeout. Connect all four cameras to the hat and run the test again.
Ah okay, that makes sense. I’ll wire up all four and give libcamera-hello another shot.
To sum up: the Camarray Hat requires all four cameras to be connected for proper operation, so testing with a single camera isn’t sufficient and leads to the camera frontend timeout you saw. Once all four are connected, retry the test and let us know if it’s still failing.