Hi everyone. I’m having trouble with the B016712MP (IMX477 PTZ) camera and could use some help.
I’ve got two of these cameras. The first one will only capture an image — autofocus and PTZ don’t work at all. The little auxiliary board never lights up and there’s no motor sound at all. I also noticed a small part of the plate on that camera looks like it’s sticking out abnormally. The second camera works perfectly on a Raspberry Pi 4: image, autofocus, and zoom all fine.
The bigger problem is that I’ve never been able to get this camera working on my NVIDIA Orin NX. I’m using a reComputer J4012 carrier board (a third-party board, though reComputer is an official NVIDIA partner). I’ve tried JetPack R35.2.1 and R35.3.1.
When I run the driver install on R35.2.1 I get:
RuntimeError: No DTB found for NVIDIA Orin NX Developer Kit!
An unknown error occurred while installing dtoverlays.
I’ve flashed both R35.2.1 and R35.3.1 (three flashes total, lots of attempts) and the driver just won’t install. I also tried the native Jetson IO IMX477 configuration. The closest I got was JetsonCamera.py opening a blurred image; using another official executable just makes the camera inaccessible.
Photos:
Second camera:
First camera:
Protrusion on the first camera plate:
Is the B016712MP actually compatible with the Orin NX, or is this carrier board just not supported?
Thanks for the detailed write-up. Could you clarify this part for me: ‘testing it on a Raspberry Pi 4 has also worked everything correctly in the second camera but only the image in the first one’? Just want to make sure I understand what works where.
On the Orin NX question — we don’t have support for third-party carrier boards like the reComputer J4012. That board may be incompatible with some Arducam cameras, and based on what you’re seeing I can’t confirm yet whether the problem is the camera or the platform.
The best way to isolate that is to test the camera on the official NVIDIA Orin NX development kit. If it works there, the problem is the third-party carrier board; if it doesn’t, then we can look further into the camera itself.
Sorry for the confusing wording. What I meant is: I have two identical B016712MP cameras. On the same Raspberry Pi 4, the second camera works completely — image, autofocus, and zoom all fine. The first camera only gives an image. No light comes on and the zoom motor doesn’t start at all when it’s plugged into the same Pi.
So on the identical device, one unit works and the other doesn’t. I also noticed a physical difference on the auxiliary controller board between the two — that’s the protrusion I mentioned in the first photo. That’s why I started wondering if the first unit’s controller board is faulty.
Got it, that’s a much clearer comparison. Since the second unit works fully on the same Raspberry Pi, we can use it to isolate the fault.
Here’s what I’d like you to try: swap the controller board from the working second unit onto the first camera module. Then check whether the first camera module starts behaving correctly (autofocus and PTZ responding). If it does, the problem is the controller board on the first unit. If it still doesn’t, then the issue is likely in the camera module itself.
That makes sense. The second camera is currently in a customer proof of concept, so I’ll go to the office next week and do the swap test with the working unit’s controller board on the first camera module.
While I’m at it — would the original NVIDIA Jetson TX2 or Xavier AGX developer kits be supported for further testing? I have those available.
Just to set expectations: the IMX477 PTZ camera module does not support Jetson TX2 or Xavier AGX at the moment, so don’t rely on those for testing. Stick with a supported platform — the Raspberry Pi 4 setup you already verified is fine.
So to recap where we are: we don’t support the third-party Orin NX carrier board (reComputer J4012), and TX2/Xavier AGX aren’t supported for this module either. The most useful next step is the controller board swap on the Pi 4 to confirm whether the first unit’s controller board is the faulty part.
