Hey everyone, hoping someone here can help me out. I’ve got a B0444 — the 2MP IMX462 STARVIS camera module with the 141° wide-angle M12 lens — and I can’t get it detected on either my Raspberry Pi 5 or my Pi 4.
Running rpicam-hello just gives me the usual “no camera detected” error on both boards. I’ve double-checked the ribbon cable orientation: on the camera module end, the contacts face away from the PCB, and on the Pi side, the contacts face towards the Ethernet and USB ports. I’ve been through all the Arducam docs I could find and nothing has helped so far.
Anyone run into this with the same module? Not sure if I’m missing something obvious or if the unit is just dead.
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble. That B0444 module is based on the IMX462 sensor and uses the pivariety driver stack, so the standard rpicam-hello won’t work out of the box unless the correct overlay and packages are in place.
A few things to check first:
What OS are you running on both Pi’s? (Bookworm, Bullseye, 64-bit or 32-bit?)
Have you installed the pivariety driver packages yet? On Bookworm you’d typically need to install arducam-pivariety via apt or from their GitHub.
Which camera connector are you using on the Pi 5 — Cam0 or Cam1?
If you haven’t installed the pivariety packages yet, that’s likely the issue. Let’s start there and see where we land.
Thanks for the quick reply. I went ahead and installed the pivariety packages as you suggested. I also moved the camera over to the Cam1 connector on the Pi 5, just in case Cam0 was being finicky.
Unfortunately, still nothing. I ran the arducam-camera-bug-report debug script and I’ve got the output here — looks like the sensor just isn’t being picked up at all. dmesg doesn’t show any i2c probe activity for the IMX462 either.
For reference, this is on a Pi 5 running Bookworm 64-bit. I haven’t gone back to test the Pi 4 yet since I figured I’d focus on getting it working on one board first.
Okay, that’s helpful. Since you’ve got the pivariety packages installed and you’re on the Cam1 connector, the next thing to verify is the device tree overlay. By default, the overlay needs to be explicitly told which camera interface to use.
Can you add this line to /boot/firmware/config.txt:
dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety,cam0
You can do it with:
echo "dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety,cam0" | sudo tee -a /boot/firmware/config.txt
Then reboot and try rpicam-hello again. The cam0 parameter maps to the Cam1 physical connector on the Pi 5, which is a bit confusing but that’s how it works. Let me know what you get after that.
Tried that — added dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety,cam0 to config.txt and rebooted. Still no camera detected. rpicam-hello throws the same error, and libcamera-hello --list-cameras shows nothing.
I’ve attached some photos of the current hardware connection so you can see how everything is seated. The ribbon cable is definitely pushed all the way in on both ends and the contacts are oriented the way Arducam’s docs show. I’m starting to wonder if this module is just faulty out of the box.
Thanks for the photos — the connection looks correct to me. Cable orientation and seating both look fine.
Let’s try one more variation before we go further. Remove the ,cam0 parameter and just use the bare overlay:
echo "dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety" | sudo tee -a /boot/firmware/config.txt
Make sure you’re not duplicating the line — if you added the cam0 version before, remove or comment out the old one first. On some kernel/firmware combinations, the cam0 override can cause issues and the overlay auto-detection works better without it.
Also, could you share the output of sudo dmesg | grep -i arducam and sudo dmesg | grep -i imx462 after a fresh boot? That’ll help narrow down whether the overlay is even loading.
Went ahead and cleaned up config.txt — removed the old cam0 line and added just dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety on its own. Rebooted, and unfortunately it’s the same story. Camera still not detected.
Here’s the terminal output showing I ran the command correctly (screenshot attached). After reboot, sudo dmesg | grep -i arducam returns nothing at all. Same for grepping imx462. It’s like the overlay loads but the sensor never responds on the i2c bus.
At this point I’ve:
Installed pivariety packages
Tried both dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety,cam0 and dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety
Moved the camera between Cam0 and Cam1 connectors
Tested on a Pi 4 as well early on
Run the arducam-camera-bug-report script
Nothing has made a difference. I’m pretty convinced the module itself is dead. Has anyone else had a DOA unit with this particular model?
That’s a thorough set of tests — honestly, you’ve covered pretty much everything I would have suggested at this point. The fact that dmesg shows no activity at all for the sensor after all those overlay and connector variations is concerning. With a working IMX462 module, you should at minimum see i2c enumeration logs or a probe attempt in the kernel ring buffer.
I’ve sent you details via private message for a remote session so we can take a closer look in real time and confirm whether this is a hardware fault. Please check your messages and we’ll go from there. If it does turn out to be DOA, we’ll get you sorted.