Arducam Quadcam cameras stopped working on Raspberry Pi 4B Bookworm - camera frontend timed out

Raspberry Pi Cameras
1

Hi everyone, I’m stuck with my Arducam quadcam kit. It used to work fine on my Raspberry Pi 4B, but now the cameras just won’t work. Every time I try I get “camera frontend has timed out”.

My setup:

  • Raspberry Pi 4B
  • Bookworm OS 64-bit
  • 8GB RAM
  • Arducam quadcam (quad-camera kit)

I’ve attached a bug report and some pictures of the wiring for reference. Nothing obvious changed on my end, but I’m not sure what to look for.

2

Thanks for the report and the photos. Since this worked before and suddenly stopped, did you change anything on the quadcam setup around when it started failing? New cable, different port, OS update, reseated the HAT, anything like that?

In the meantime, can you generate a fresh bug report so we can see the current state? Reboot the Pi, then run:

wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/Dion4cen/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/Tool/arducam-camera-bug-report
chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report
./arducam-camera-bug-report

That creates an “arducam-bug-report.txt” file in the current directory. Post it here and we can dig in.

One thing to keep in mind while you test: a single Arducam 64MP camera can’t be used with the Pi 4 or Pi 5 on its own. It needs the quad camera kit.

3

Right, I’ve also noticed the camera doesn’t work individually at all - it only ever worked when using it as part of the quadcam kit. I also tried moving everything over to a Raspberry Pi 5 and couldn’t get it to work there either. On the Pi 4B I installed the correct drivers, but on the Pi 5 it still won’t detect anything.

4

Quick question - does the “camera frontend has timed out” error only appear when you run the camera individually, or does it also happen with the full kit?

For the Pi 5 side: take the SD card from your Pi 4 (Bookworm OS, 6.6.20) and put it straight into the Pi 5. Also make sure the quad kit is connected to the CAM 1 port on the Pi 5’s board - that’s the port the default overlay expects.

5

Okay, I ran through a bunch of combinations. Here’s the full test matrix:

  1. Single Arducam on Pi 4B - error: ‘failed to start camera’
  2. Quadcam kit on Pi 5 (same SD card, kit on CAM 1 port) - Pi 5 does not detect the quadcamera kit
  3. Quadcam kit on Pi 5 (same SD card, kit on CAM 0 port) - Pi 5 does not detect the quadcamera kit
  4. Single Arducam on Pi 5 (tried both CAM 0 and CAM 1) - Pi 5 does not detect the arducam
  5. Quadcam back on Pi 4B - still getting the same ‘camera frontend has timed out’

I’ve attached the bug report from the single Arducam attempt.

6

Thanks, that matrix is really useful. Let me clear up a few hardware requirements, because some of those results are expected.

A single Arducam can’t be used on its own with either the Pi 4 or the Pi 5 - that’s not a supported configuration. You need at least two cameras assembled on the HAT board (RX0/RX1 and RX2/RX3). If there’s only one, the Pi won’t detect the kit or show a stream.

The overlay and port also have to match:

  • dtoverlay=arducam-64mp enables the CAM 1 port
  • dtoverlay=arducam-64mp,cam0 enables the CAM 0 port

So assemble all four cameras on the HAT board, connect the kit to the CAM 1 port, and use dtoverlay=arducam-64mp in config.txt. If you want CAM 0 instead, use dtoverlay=arducam-64mp,cam0.

7

I put all four cameras on the HAT board and retested, but I’m still stuck:

  • Pi 5: regardless of CAM 1 or CAM 0 (I added the line ‘dtoverlay=arducam64-mp,cam0’), the HAT kit is not detected
  • Pi 4: the cameras are now detected, but I still get “Camera frontend has timed out”

So the Pi 4 got further with all four cameras mounted, but the timeout error is still there.

8

Got it. So on the Pi 5 it’s still not detecting the HAT kit on either CAM port, even with dtoverlay=arducam64-mp,cam0. And on the Pi 4, detection works now with all four cameras, but the frontend still times out.

To confirm - this quadcam kit previously worked fine on the Pi 4, right? Did anything change in the setup around when the timeout started appearing? Any OS updates, cable swaps, or changes to config.txt?

9

Yes, the kit was working fine before. Then the frontend timeout error started showing up out of nowhere. I’ve tried several things since, but nothing has brought it back. Any suggestions or fixes for this? I’m still stuck with the timeout on the Pi 4 and no detection at all on the Pi 5.

10

Thanks for confirming. Let me summarize where we are so far:

  • Pi 4 with all four cameras: kit is detected, but “camera frontend has timed out” persists
  • Pi 5 with all four cameras: not detected on CAM 0 or CAM 1, even with the cam0 overlay
  • Single camera use isn’t supported on either Pi, so those failures are expected

Since the kit worked before on the Pi 4, the sudden frontend timeout is the key thing to chase down. If you can grab a fresh bug report from the Pi 4 with all four cameras connected and post it, we can look at what’s happening on the frontend side. We’re still investigating the sudden timeout, and I’ll follow up once we have something concrete to try next.