I’m trying to integrate the Arducam 8.3MP Sony STARVIS 2 IMX585 Ultra Low Light Manual Focus USB 3.0 camera into a product, but I need at least a 2-meter connection between the camera and the host. The camera works perfectly with the included 1-meter cable and any other short USB 3.0 cables I’ve tried, but as soon as I go to 2 meters, things fall apart. The camera either isn’t detected at all or connects intermittently. Has anyone managed to get this camera working reliably at 2 meters?
That’s a fairly common challenge with high-bandwidth USB 3.0 cameras. Can you share more about what cables you’ve tested at the 2-meter length? Are you using passive cables, or have you tried any active/optical extension cables?
I’ve tested quite a few. Started with regular passive 2m USB 3.0 cables from a couple different brands — no luck, just wouldn’t enumerate reliably. Then I moved on to what I thought would be the fix: a 2m optical/active USB 3.0 extension cable. Honestly, that was disappointing. It connects sometimes, maybe 1 out of 5 attempts, but most of the time the camera just doesn’t show up or drops out after a few seconds. I really need this to be rock-solid for product integration, not a coin flip.
Thanks for the detail. Unfortunately, what you’re hitting is a known fundamental limitation with this camera and USB 3.0 in general. The IMX585 sensor on that module pushes a very large amount of data — it’s an 8.3MP sensor running over USB 3.0 SuperSpeed lanes, and that requires excellent signal integrity end-to-end. In our own testing, passive USB 3.0 cables beyond roughly 1.5 meters simply can’t maintain the signal quality needed for stable operation with this camera. The eye diagram opens up too much, bit errors creep in, and the USB host controller starts re-enumerating or dropping the device.
Right, that makes sense based on what I’m seeing. So are there any 2-meter cables you guys have validated or would officially recommend? Even if it’s a specific brand or model? I’m open to anything — active, optical, whatever — as long as it works.
I wish I had a better answer here, but we don’t have a certified 2-meter cable for this camera, and we can’t officially recommend any specific third-party solution at that length. Even the optical/active cables you already tried — that experience is consistent with what we’ve seen. Some optical cables work okay with lower-bandwidth USB 3.0 devices, but the IMX585’s sustained data throughput means even tiny timing mismatches from the optical-to-electrical conversion cause problems. The only configuration we can guarantee stable operation with is the high-quality 1-meter cable that ships in the box. I know that’s not what you want to hear for a product integration scenario.
Yeah, the 1-meter limitation is a real problem for this project. We can’t just put the host computer 1 meter away from the camera in the physical layout we have. Let me ask a different question — does Arducam have any camera offering similar image quality to the IMX585 but that uses IP/Ethernet instead of USB? If we could run POE, cable length becomes a non-issue. We’d happily switch to a network-connected camera if the sensor quality is comparable.
That’s actually a great approach, and yes, there is something that might fit. We have a partner product — the UCTronics All-in-One Raspberry Pi AI Camera Kit with CM5 inside. It’s designed as an outdoor security camera (IP66 rated) and uses POE or USB power, so you can run Ethernet for both data and power over long distances. It bypasses the USB cable length limitation entirely. The imaging pipeline is different from the IMX585 module, so I’d recommend checking the specs to see if the image quality meets your requirements. You can review it here: All-in-One Raspberry Pi AI Camera Kit with CM5 inside, Outdoor Security IP66 Camera Kit, PoE Power. If POE-based IP cameras are on the table for your integration, this is definitely worth a close look.