Hi everyone, I’m trying to figure out how to combine the Arducam Pan-Tilt kit with my current setup. I’ve got the Arducam 64MP camera on a Raspberry Pi 4, and the digital zoom/pan/tilt is already working well. I’d like to physically pan and tilt the camera too using the Pan-Tilt kit, but I’m not clear on how the two systems are supposed to work together in one physical setup. Do I just keep using the digital pan/zoom from the keyboard and run some separate code in a second window to drive the physical pan-tilt? Or is there some kind of dashboard-like application that can control both the digital and physical pan/tilt instructions at the same time?
Welcome! Could you give a bit more detail on the environment? Which camera module and board are you using, and what software or library are you currently using for the digital zoom/pan/tilt? That will help narrow this down.
Sure. It’s the Arducam 64MP camera installed on a Raspberry Pi 4. Digital zoom, pan, and tilt are all operating well. I also have the Arducam Pan-Tilt kit for the physical movement, but I haven’t written anything for it yet. Right now I’m just considering running code in a second window to operate the physical pan and tilt, but I was hoping there might be a dashboard-like app that controls both together.
Thanks. Just to check, do you have any existing scripts or logs from the digital side you can share? Also, which interface are you using for the camera, libcamera, Arducam’s scripts, or something else?
I don’t have any code or logs to share at the moment. The digital zoom/pan/tilt already works through the camera setup so I haven’t touched that part. My main question is really whether both the digital and physical pan/tilt can be driven from one place, or if I have to run them as two separate things.
Got it. Based on what you’ve described, your current 64MP camera setup only provides digital zoom/pan/tilt. Physical pan/tilt needs a separate mechanism and its own control method, which is why combining them isn’t straightforward. The Pan-Tilt kit is driven independently from the digital controls, so out of the box you’d typically end up with two separate control streams rather than one unified interface.
For a combined PTZ (physical pan-tilt-zoom) function in a single dashboard, Arducam support recommends considering the Arducam 12MP Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) camera module for Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano instead. It handles physical pan/tilt/zoom natively in one dashboard. Details are on the product page: Arducam 12MP Pan Tilt Zoom PTZ Camera for Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano
To sum up: rather than trying to combine the 64MP camera with a separate Pan-Tilt kit, which leaves you with digital control in one place and physical control in another, the cleaner route for unified PTZ control in one dashboard is to move to a dedicated PTZ camera module like the 12MP PTZ. That avoids the two-window approach entirely.