Arducam Mega 5MP: several deployed, all initially working but some have started to return 0 byte images

SPI Cameras
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  1. Where did you get the camera module(s)? Amazon, etc.

  2. Model number of the product(s)? Mega 5MP (SKU: B0401)

  3. What hardware/platform were you working on? Particle Boron / B-SoM with wall power.

  4. Instructions you have followed. (link/manual/etc.) Official Arducam Mega GitHub repo, Mega SP1 Application Notes, etc.

  5. Problems you were having? We have deployed 10 IoT devices (indoor, with wall power) with Arducam Megas. 6 are working well, 4 have started to return 0 byte images.

  6. The dmesg log from your hardware?

  7. Troubleshooting attempts you’ve made? The devices are all remote and not easily accessible. We are remotely power cycling them, and also checking register values to determine camera state, remotely resetting the cameras by writing to registers 0x02 and 0x07, etc.

  8. What help do you need?

Initially all cameras worked well. We take photos between 1-10 times a day with each camera. Over time we started to get back invalid 0 byte images from some ArduCams.

Particle devices behave similarly to Arduino devices. The only substantive change made to the official driver code was to use the Particle SPI library. I force the SPI clock speed to 4 MHz so it isn’t a timing issue.

I’ve tried writing 0x05 to register 0x02. I’ve also tried writing 0x40 to 0x07.

Is there anything else I should try doing to resuscitate cameras that are no longer capturing valid images?

We plan to deploy hundreds of devices but this issue is a bottleneck.

Thanks for your help.

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Hi,
Checking it. Please stay tuned to this thread and we will reply to you as soon as possible.

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Thank you Dion. Happy to provide whatever additional details you need.