Hi everyone, I’m trying to get external triggering working on my Arducam Pivariety camera (the mono version) and I’m completely stuck. I’m feeding a 100 microsecond pulse at the documented voltage, but all I get is a black screen with no capture. libcamera-still just reports a timeout and then tries to restart. I also can’t find the rpi_apps.yaml file anywhere in my project folders like the docs mention.
Thanks for the details. Can you confirm exactly what commands you ran to put the camera into trigger mode, and what timeout setting you used? Also, could you paste the full output from your libcamera-still command? The error text matters a lot here.
There are a couple of important clues in that log. The warning about ‘No static properties available for arducam-pivariety’ and especially the error ‘Configuration file arducam-pivariety_mono.json not found for IPA module raspberrypi’ tell me the Arducam-specific libcamera isn’t installed properly. The stock libcamera doesn’t know about this sensor. So the Arducam libcamera install never completed successfully.
Let’s start untangling that. Can you try removing the current libcamera0 package?
Okay, I ran sudo apt remove libcamera0 and got this:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
You might want to run ‘apt --fix-broken install’ to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libcamera-apps : Depends: libcamera0 (>= 0~git20230310+1ca234a8) but it is not going to be installed
libcamera-dev : Depends: libcamera0 (= 0~git20230512+8689dd6b-1) but it is not going to be installed
libcamera-tools : Depends: libcamera0 (>= 0~git20230302+923f5d70) but it is not going to be installed
python3-libcamera : Depends: libcamera0 (>= 0~git20230302+923f5d70) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try ‘apt --fix-broken install’ with no packages (or specify a solution).
Should I run apt --fix-broken install like it says?
This is the core problem, and I’d hold off on --fix-broken install for now. Your system has conflicting libcamera packages from different versions. Notice the version conflict: libcamera-dev wants 0~git20230512+8689dd6b-1, but 0~git20230512+f155393c-1 is what’s present. Leftover packages from different builds are fighting each other, which is exactly why the Arducam libcamera install never completed.
Have you tried running the Arducam install script for libcamera? Something like:
Yes, I tried ./install_pivariety_pkgs.sh -p libcamera_dev and got this:
Hardware Revision: c03111
Kernel Version: 6.1.21-v8+
OS Codename: bullseye
ARCH: aarch64
Downloaded libcamera_links.txt (7874 bytes), libcamera0_0_git20230724+ad9428b4-1_armhf.deb (654648 bytes), libcamera-dev_0_git20230724+ad9428b4-1_armhf.deb (24408 bytes)
libcamera-dev : Depends: libcamera0 (= 0~git20230512+8689dd6b-1) but 0~git20230512+f155393c-1 is to be installed
python3-libcamera : Depends: libcamera0 (>= 0~git20230720+bde9b04f) but 0~git20230512+f155393c-1 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try ‘apt --fix-broken install’ with no packages (or specify a solution).
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), are you root?
That last error is the giveaway: ‘Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - are you root?’. The install script needs root privileges. Can you check whether you’ve actually been running these commands with sudo? The package removal and install steps all need sudo, otherwise dpkg can’t acquire its lock and the install silently fails partway through.
Honestly I’m pretty new to Linux, and I think I’ve been missing sudo in several places. Some commands I ran without it, and that’s when I got the Permission denied errors. Let me go back and run everything properly as root.
I’ll try that, thanks. One question though - the log also said ‘Please check that your camera sensor connector is attached securely’ and ‘try another cable and/or sensor’. Could the timeout actually be a physical connection problem rather than a software issue?
Good question. The ‘Unicam has timed out!’ message can point to a physical connection issue (connector/cable/sensor seating), but in your case the primary unresolved issue is almost certainly the incomplete Arducam libcamera install and the dependency conflicts. Fix the install first, then re-test the trigger.
If it still fails after the clean reinstall, please generate a bug report so we can dig deeper:
To summarize: the black screen on external trigger is very likely a symptom of the Arducam libcamera not being installed correctly, caused by conflicting package versions (libcamera0 0~git20230512+f155393c-1 vs the expected 0~git20230512+8689dd6b-1) plus several commands being run without sudo. Remove the conflicting libcamera0 with sudo, re-run the Arducam install script as root, and then re-test trigger_mode=1 with the external trigger. If the Unicam timeout still persists after a clean install, run the bug report tool and send the output to [email protected].