Getting an ArduCam IMX519 16MP Autofocus working with Motion

Raspberry Pi Cameras libcamera
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Having had a bit of a fun ride getting an ArduCam IMX519 16MP Autofocus camera working with Motion (link) on a Raspberry Pi 3B+, I thought I’d share what I did and a couple of discoveries:

I installed the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye Lite 32 bit - Debian 11.6) via the Raspberry Pi Imager tool. As the Pi I’m using is run headless, I also set up ssh etc. prior to writing the SD card image.
The kernel version on my Pi 3B+ is: 5.15.84-v7+ #1613 SMP Thu Jan 5 11:59:48 GMT 2023 armv7l GNU/Linux

I installed Motion 4.5.1-1 (latest revision at time of posting):

Install dependencies (I’m not sure this is necessary):
sudo apt install autoconf automake autopoint build-essential pkgconf libtool libzip-dev libjpeg-dev git libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libavdevice-dev libwebp-dev gettext libmicrohttpd-dev

Download the software:
wget https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion/releases/download/release-4.5.1/bullseye_motion_4.5.1-1_armhf.deb

Install the installer:
sudo apt install gdebi-core

Install Motion:
sudo gdebi bullseye_motion_4.5.1-1_armhf.deb

Installing software for ArduCam IMX519: (see: Quick Start - Arducam Wiki)
(these steps are all as listed in the Quick Start Guide)

Add the following to /boot/config.txt:

camera_auto_detect=0
dtoverlay=imx519

Get the software:

wget -O install_pivariety_pkgs.sh https://github.com/ArduCAM/Arducam-Pivariety-V4L2-Driver/releases/download/install_script/install_pivariety_pkgs.sh
chmod +x install_pivariety_pkgs.sh
./install_pivariety_pkgs.sh -p libcamera_dev
./install_pivariety_pkgs.sh -p libcamera_apps

Reboot

Run raspi-config to enable Glamour and select the GL driver:

  • sudo raspi-config

  • Advanced Options

  • Enable Glamor graphic acceleration

  • Reboot

  • sudo raspi-config

  • Advanced Options

  • Navigate to GL Driver

  • Select GL (Full KMS)

  • Reboot

Install the camera driver:
./install_pivariety_pkgs.sh -p imx519_kernel_driver_low_speed

Reboot

Edit /etc/motion/motion.conf:

The motion software runs the camera as a /dev/video0 device, so there are no MMAL settings needed. The only ‘funny’ is the default motion ‘input’ parameter needs changing from ‘-1’ to ‘0’ for the video streaming to work. This is done via the ‘video_params’ setting (ie)

video_params palette=17,input=0

I started with the following width/height settings. Unfortunately, this seems to max out the Pi 3B (load average 1.6), so I used the PiCamera V2 settings instead, which brought the load average down to 0.55. This needs further investigation as of course it means I can’t use the camera’s full resolution.

width 3840; height 2160 changed to: width 1640; height 1232

Motion is then run with the following command:

sudo libcamerify motion -n &

Getting autofocus to work was interesting.

Firstly, I had to install pip for ‘FocuserExample.py’ to work.
sudo apt install python3-pip

Then I downloaded the focus software:
git clone https://github.com/ArduCAM/Arducam-Pivariety-V4L2-Driver.git

To run the software, change directory:
cd Arducam-Pivariety-V4L2-Driver/focus

If you run the software using the ArduCam instructions, the Python script fails with a ‘no autofocus’ message:
python3 FocuserExample.py -d /dev/v4l-subdev0

I then went down a rabbit hole following this posting (how-is-it-possible-to-get-autofocus-working-along-with-picamera2-for-imx519) which led me to attempt to remove python3-libcamera. In retrospect, this may not have been necessary as it doesn’t appear to have been installed anyway.
This didn’t fix the issue, so investigating further I found:
v4l2-ctl -l -d /dev/v4l-subdev0
doesn’t show autofocus but
v4l2-ctl -l -d /dev/v4l-subdev1
does

So I ran python3 FocuserExample.py -d /dev/v4l-subdev1 instead and manual focus now works.

I hope the above is useful to someone. Observations/comments welcome!

2

Hi,
Many thanks to you, bro！
@Edward Come here to learn from the OP about specialties and carefulness.

3

I ought to point out the reason I run libcamerify motion as root is because scripts I run when movies start and end require root privileges. Under most circumstances, ‘libcamerify motion -n &’ would be fine, or you can edit the service file which gets installed as part of the motion package (ie)

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/motion.service
change the ExecStart line to ExecStart=/usr/bin/libcamerify motion
Save and close.
Follow with:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctrl start motion.service

Investigating this further shows I can increase the resolution up to the 3840x2160 and keep the processor load below 100% by reducing the frames captured per second parameter to 1 (from 10). This isn’t ideal but is probably adequate for my purposes. It’s also possible I may have an unintended format conversion going on in motion which is adding to the load but I’m parking this for the moment.

4

Sorry to reply to a thread over a year old, but maybe you can help either way :slight_smile:

I have a 16MP IMX519 that has auto focus working through the special libcamera tools provided by Arducam. I wanted to setup Motion with this camera, and believe I have that working too, but it doesn’t look like my camera is in focus.

I’m puzzled wondering (1) if my libcamerify is somehow unable to set autofocus mode, or how to do that.

I see your original comment went on to explain your experimenting with the python examples and subdev0 and subdev1, but I’m not sure I am seeing the link between libcamerify launching motion and the python scripts.

In short - did you ever manage to enable auto focus with motion and this camera? Or perhaps you somehow used a separate python script to set a manual focus and then used that somehow with motion?