Hi all. I picked up an Arducam IMX 678 B0497 USB camera to use as a low light live feed to a display - not recording or photos, just clear color video at night. I’m on Windows and using PotPlayer per the quick start guide. The camera is detected and I get a picture, but in PotPlayer when I go to Filters > Arducam > Filter Properties, the brightness scale is locked and I can’t change it. I’ve tested on multiple PCs with the same result. Anyone else seen this or know how to unlock the filter properties?
Thanks for the report. To narrow this down, can you confirm whether only the brightness control is locked, or is the exposure control also affected? Also, if you can record a short video of what happens when you try to open and adjust the filter properties in PotPlayer, that would really help. For low light setups, exposure usually matters a lot more than brightness, so I want to make sure we’re checking the right control.
Update: brightness is now adjustable, so that one works. But most of the other settings still can’t be selected - sharpness, low light compensation, and a few others are grayed out. The bigger issue is the image itself: it’s blurry and at night it basically looks black. This camera was supposed to be my low light/night solution, but right now the night image is unusable.
Here’s what I’m seeing:
Thanks for the screenshots and the update. Let me check with the team on which controls are actually exposed for this module and whether there’s a better path for low light. In the meantime, are you testing only in PotPlayer, or have you also tried controlling the camera through code (OpenCV, etc.)? That context will help me figure out what options are available.
I’ve also been trying it with OpenCV and Python. I can open the camera, view the feed, and change some settings through code, but I still can’t get anything close to the ‘ultra low light mode’ that’s described. At night it’s still way too dark. Is there another setting I’m missing? Or is there an Arducam-specific SDK or script I should be using instead of plain OpenCV?
Okay, so here’s what I found. The reason sharpness, low light compensation, and some other controls stay locked is that Arducam doesn’t expose those controls for the IMX 678 B0497 USB module. That’s expected behavior for this camera, so those won’t become adjustable in PotPlayer.
For the low light/night image quality, there’s a firmware version that adds long exposure support. After flashing it, you can enable long exposure mode, which is the recommended way to get better low light performance out of this module. I’ve sent the firmware package and the flashing guide video through private message - please check your messages and follow the video to flash it. Once it’s flashed, try long exposure mode and test the night image again. That should make a noticeable difference for your use case.