Hi everyone, I’ve got a Raspberry Pi 4 and just picked up an Arducam B0205 (2MP OV2710) camera. I went to the Arducam downloads page and grabbed AMCap.exe, but when I try to run it on the Pi I get a message saying “Select an application to open “DOS/Windows executable” files.” I’m guessing this .exe is Windows only? Is there a Linux version of the GUI tool I can use instead?
Right, AMCap.exe is a Windows executable so it won’t run directly on the Pi’s Linux OS. The message you’re seeing is the OS not knowing what to do with a DOS/Windows binary. What OS are you running on the Pi 4? If it’s Raspberry Pi OS or Ubuntu there’s a simpler route.
It’s Raspberry Pi OS (Debian-based). I don’t necessarily need AMCap specifically, I just want something with a GUI to preview the camera feed. Is there an Arducam Linux app, or do I need to use something else?
For Linux on the Pi we usually point people to VLC instead of AMCap. There isn’t a direct Linux port of AMCap for this, but VLC can open the camera as a capture device and it’s already available for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems. You can grab it from the VideoLAN site for Ubuntu here: VLC media player for Ubuntu - VideoLAN - or just run sudo apt install vlc if you’re on Raspberry Pi OS.
Thanks, that makes sense. I’ll install VLC and try opening the camera device with it. So to confirm - AMCap is basically a Windows-only utility and there’s no point trying to run it on the Pi, right?
Correct. AMCap.exe is a DOS/Windows executable and can’t run natively on the Pi’s Linux environment - that’s the root cause of the error you hit. VLC is the recommended GUI for previewing the camera feed on Linux/Raspberry Pi. Install it, then in VLC go to Media > Open Capture Device and select your camera’s video device (often /dev/video0). That should give you a live preview.