B0270 cameras not detected on Raspberry Pi 5 Bookworm, libcamera says no cameras available

Raspberry Pi Cameras
1

Hi all, I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I’ve got a Raspberry Pi 5 running Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm with two Arducam B0270 cameras hooked up. I followed the quick start guide and rebooted, but libcamera just returns ‘no cameras available’ — neither camera shows up at all.

2

Thanks for the details. Can you run dmesg | grep imx and paste the output here? That will show us whether the kernel is even trying to load the sensor driver.

3

Sure, here’s what I get:

[ 0.536713] platform 1f00128000.csi: Fixed dependency cycle(s) with /axi/pcie@120000/rp1/i2c@80000/imx477@1a
[ 3.286266] rp1-cfe 1f00128000.csi: found subdevice /axi/pcie@120000/rp1/i2c@80000/imx477@1a
[ 3.629263] imx477 4-001a: failed to read chip id 477, with error -5
[ 3.629530] imx477: probe of 4-001a failed with error -5

I noticed the line about ‘failed to read chip id 477’ but I’m not sure what it means.

4

That failed chip id read is actually the important bit, but let’s not jump ahead. Could you also post the contents of /boot/firmware/config.txt? The camera-related lines matter here.

5

Here’s my config.txt:

For more options and information see

http://rptl.io/configtxt

Some settings may impact device functionality. See link above for details

Uncomment some or all of these to enable the optional hardware interfaces

#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on

Enable audio (loads snd_bcm2835)

dtparam=audio=on

Additional overlays and parameters are documented

/boot/firmware/overlays/README

Automatically load overlays for detected cameras

camera_auto_detect=0

Automatically load overlays for detected DSI displays

display_auto_detect=1

Automatically load initramfs files, if found

auto_initramfs=1

Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2

Don’t have the firmware create an initial video= setting in cmdline.txt.

Use the kernel’s default instead.

disable_fw_kms_setup=1

Run in 64-bit mode

arm_64bit=1

Disable compensation for displays with overscan

disable_overscan=1

Run as fast as firmware / board allows

arm_boost=1

[cm4]

Enable host mode on the 2711 built-in XHCI USB controller.

This line should be removed if the legacy DWC2 controller is required

(e.g. for USB device mode) or if USB support is not required.

otg_mode=1

[cm5]
dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host

[all]
dtoverlay=imx477

6

Thanks. So config.txt has camera_auto_detect=0 and dtoverlay=imx477 at the bottom. The overlay is being loaded — dmesg shows the kernel found the subdevice at /axi/pcie@120000/rp1/i2c@80000/imx477@1a — but then it fails with:

imx477 4-001a: failed to read chip id 477, with error -5

That error -5 is an I2C read failure, meaning the Pi can’t actually talk to the sensor over I2C. That typically points to a wiring/connection issue or a wrong overlay configuration. Could you post a couple of photos of the connections, one at the Pi end and one at the camera end?

7

I’ll grab some photos. One question though — I’ve got both cameras on the same cabling setup shown in the guide. Would the same error -5 explain both cameras missing, or would they fail separately?

8

If the driver can’t read the chip ID, the sensor never gets registered, so yes, that single failure would take out both. Before the photos, do a clean reboot and re-check dmesg to confirm the failure is consistent.

9

Rebooted and re-ran it — same errors, same lines. Photos attached.

10

Thanks, got the photos. The chip ID read failure is still the thing we need to chase down. In the meantime, let’s pull a full bug report so we can see the whole system state. Run these three commands:

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 will create arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Please send that file to me in a private message rather than pasting it here, since it can include system-specific details.

11

Done — the tool produced arducam-bug-report.txt and I’ve sent it over in a PM.

12

Got it. To sum up where we are: the cameras aren’t detected because the imx477 driver can’t read the sensor chip ID over I2C (error -5). We haven’t pinned down the root cause yet — it could be the wiring or the overlay setup. I’ll go through the bug report and the photos and update here once I’ve got something.