Arducam Pico4ML GitHub demos not working: person detection error and magic wand no LCD display

SPI Cameras
1

Hey all, I just picked up an Arducam Pico4ML board and I can’t get any of the GitHub demos to run. I’ve been following the instructions but nothing works. Anyone else having trouble with these demos?

2

Welcome to the forum. Can you give us a bit more detail — which demos are you trying, and what exactly happens when you run them? Any error text or screenshots would be helpful.

3

Sure. The person detection demo fails with an error as soon as I run it. This is what shows up:

image.png

4

Thanks for the screenshot. Just so I understand the scope — is it only the person detection demo failing, or are other demos broken too?

5

It’s not just that one. The magic wand demo doesn’t initialize correctly either. The LCD screen stays completely blank, nothing displays at all.

6

Got it, so we have two separate demos failing at once: the person detection demo throwing that error, and the magic wand demo with no LCD output.

That pattern — multiple demos failing at the same time — usually points to a hardware connection or board setup issue rather than a bug in any single demo. Before we go deeper, could you post a few photos of your hardware connections? Board wiring, the LCD connection, and how it’s powered/USB-connected would all help.

7

Will do. In the meantime I also realized I might have been on the wrong repo this whole time. I was using a different repository from the ArduCAM channel instead of the one listed in the instructions. I ended up finding this one:

It looks like the ArduCAM channel repositories are deprecated.

8

That’s a useful find. If the repo you were building from is deprecated, that could definitely explain why the demos misbehave or don’t match the current board firmware/hardware. For now, the working theory is:

  • The wrong/deprecated repository may be the cause of the demo failures.
  • The hardware connection side is still being investigated (we’re waiting on the connection photos).

The root cause isn’t confirmed yet. Try building from the correct repo you linked, and post those hardware photos when you can so we can rule out a wiring issue.