Hi, I’m trying to get an ArduCam Raspberry Pi Multi-Camera Adapter Module V2.2 working on a Raspberry Pi with Picamera2. The weird thing is the adapter was detected once, then it just stopped working, even after I rebooted/reset the Pi. I’m finding conflicting instructions across a few different sources, so I’m not sure which one is right. Does anyone have an example Picamera2 program for this adapter? Also, how do you select individual cameras in Picamera2 when using the multi-camera adapter header?
Welcome. For Picamera2 examples, ArduCAM now has a repo at GitHub - ArduCAM/picamera2_examples · GitHub and the official Raspberry Pi repo is at GitHub - raspberrypi/picamera2: New libcamera based python library · GitHub. The ArduCAM examples should show how to open a specific camera index when using the multi-camera adapter. When you say it was detected once, do you remember which guide or command you used at that point, and did you save any dmesg or i2c output? That would help narrow it down.
At first I was following the printed paper guide that came with the adapter. That’s when it was detected once. After that it stopped showing up even after resetting the Pi. I didn’t think to save the output when it was actually detected, sorry. After it stopped working I couldn’t get it to detect again.
No worries. Which other instructions have you tried since then? There are a couple of common ones: the GitHub Multi_Camera_Adapter_V2.2_python examples and the docs Quick Start Guide. If you’ve tried both, we can compare what happened with each.
I tried the GitHub instructions at RaspberryPi/Multi_Camera_Adapter/Multi_Adapter_Board_4Channel/Multi_Camera_Adapter_V2.2_python at master · ArduCAM/RaspberryPi · GitHub - no luck. Then I followed the Quick Start Guide at Quick Start Guide for Multi-Camera Adapter Board - Arducam Wiki and it didn’t work at all. After that I borrowed another multi-camera adapter and used the same Pi, cables, and cameras. The borrowed one worked fine, so I’m starting to think my original adapter is a hardware problem.
Thanks, that’s useful. If the borrowed adapter works with the same setup, that strongly suggests the original V2.2 module is faulty. To confirm it before you go further, we can capture a bug report from the original adapter. Please reboot, then run these commands: wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/ketai-dhr/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/tools/arducam-camera-bug-report, then chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report, then ./arducam-camera-bug-report. That creates arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Please send me that file through private message and I’ll check it.
Got it, I’ll run that with the original adapter connected and send you the report. So far the borrowed adapter is still working, so at least the Pi and Picamera2 setup look fine.
To summarize: the original ArduCam Multi-Camera Adapter Module V2.2 appears to be faulty, because a borrowed adapter works without issue on the same Pi with the same cameras. The bug report from the original adapter will help confirm what the hardware is doing, but the current workaround is to keep using the borrowed adapter. For Picamera2 code, check the ArduCAM picamera2_examples repo and the official picamera2 repo linked earlier - those should cover selecting cameras with the multi-camera adapter.