Hey everyone, I’m having trouble getting my Arducam IMX477 Autofocus 12MP Wide-Angle M12 camera working on a Waveshare Jetson Orin Nano carrier board. I ran the official install script from ArduCAM’s GitHub releases page and it failed right away. Here’s what I did:
The script downloads fine (15707 bytes) but then immediately errors out with:
Cannot find the corresponding deb package, please send the following information to [email protected]
Kernel version: 5.15.148-tegra-36.4.3-20250107174145
Jetson type: UNKNOWN
Anyone seen this before? I’m running whatever JetPack version comes bundled with the Waveshare board. Not sure if this is a kernel mismatch or something else entirely.
Thanks for posting the full error output, that’s really helpful. The “Jetson type: UNKNOWN” part is the key clue here. The install script checks what hardware it’s running on and it’s not recognizing your board. Just to confirm — you mentioned it’s a Waveshare carrier board, not the official NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit, correct? Can you share the exact carrier board model you’re using?
Yeah, that’s right — it’s the Waveshare Jetson Orin Nano carrier board, not the official NVIDIA dev kit. The kernel version as shown in the error is 5.15.148-tegra-36.4.3-20250107174145. The module itself is the standard Orin Nano from NVIDIA, but the carrier board is the third-party Waveshare one.
That explains it. The Arducam IMX477 camera and its driver package are designed to work exclusively with official NVIDIA carrier boards — not third-party ones like the Waveshare. The install script queries the board’s EEPROM or device tree to identify the Jetson platform, and Waveshare’s carrier doesn’t present the identifiers the script is looking for, hence the “UNKNOWN” type and the deb package lookup failing.
Unfortunately this isn’t something that can be fixed with a script tweak or driver flag — the camera-to-carrier-board compatibility is tied to the hardware design (MIPI lane routing, clock signals, etc.). We’ve updated the product page to make this limitation clear so others don’t run into the same issue.
As a next step, I’d suggest testing the camera on an official NVIDIA Orin Nano Developer Kit if you have access to one. That’ll at least confirm the camera itself is functional. If it works there, you know the camera is fine and the issue is purely the Waveshare carrier incompatibility.
Got it, that makes sense. A bit frustrating that this wasn’t documented on the product page when I bought it, but I appreciate you updating it now. I’ll see if I can borrow an official dev kit from a friend to verify the camera works. Will report back when I’ve tested it.
Just a quick follow-up — the product page over at the uctronics listing has now been updated with the carrier board compatibility classification. It now explicitly states that the IMX477 camera is compatible with official NVIDIA carrier boards only, and not with third-party boards like the Waveshare Jetson Orin Nano. That should help anyone else researching this setup avoid the same dead end. Let us know how the test on the official dev kit goes when you get a chance.