Hey everyone, hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. I’ve got a B0396 quad camera kit (IMX219 sensors) connected to a Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit running L4T 36.4.4. The system sees the camera at /dev/video0, but I can’t actually get any video feed out of it — just black frames or errors depending on what I try.
A bit of background: I originally had a different Arducam kit (B0217J8, the synchronized stereo bundle) but that ended up not being compatible with my setup. I’m trying to do depth mapping and 3D point cloud generation, hence the quad cam setup.
One thing that’s bugging me — I checked the Arducam docs and they mention L4T support up to 36.4.3, but I’m on 36.4.4. Is that a dealbreaker? Do I need updated drivers or a different kernel for this version?
The L4T 36.4.4 compatibility shouldn’t be an issue — that 36.4.3 in the docs is actually a typo, the kit is supported on 36.4.4 as well.
The more likely problem here is that the native IMX219 camera driver hasn’t been enabled on your Jetson yet. By default it’s not active, and without it the cameras won’t produce a usable feed even though they show up as /dev/video0.
You’ll need to use the jetson-io tool to enable the driver. Here’s what to do:
Alright, I ran through the jetson-io configuration and selected “IMX219 Dual” as you suggested. Rebooted the board afterwards. Still no dice — cameras aren’t producing any video.
One thing I should mention: I’m only using 2 of the 4 camera modules at the moment. I left the other two disconnected while I was testing since I figured I’d start simple. Could that matter?
That could actually be the culprit. The quad-cam HAT board that comes with the B0396 kit may require all four camera modules to be connected for proper initialization and detection. With only two connected, the HAT might not be negotiating the camera lanes correctly.
Try connecting all four camera modules to the HAT board and then test again. Make sure the ribbon cables are fully seated — those connectors can be a bit finicky.
Okay, I hooked up all four camera modules like you said. Double-checked every ribbon cable connection. Rebooted. Still nothing. /dev/video0 is there but no actual video feed. Honestly starting to get pretty frustrated — I’ve been going back and forth on this for a while now and nothing has moved the needle.
I understand the frustration, let’s take a more diagnostic approach to narrow this down. At this point I’d like to rule out any hardware misconfiguration that might be hiding in plain sight.
Could you take some clear photos of your hardware setup and post them here? Specifically:
The camera modules connected to the HAT board
The HAT board connected to the Jetson Orin Nano
The overall layout showing how everything is seated
Sometimes a second pair of eyes on the physical connections can spot something that’s easy to miss.
Before I get to the photos — I think I made things worse. While trying different things I accidentally uninstalled the arducam-nvidia-l4t-kernel package. I was running some apt commands and didn’t realize what I was removing until it was too late.
How do I recover or reinstall that package? Could that be why nothing has worked so far? For reference, here’s everything I’ve tried up to this point:
Good news — the arducam-nvidia-l4t-kernel package isn’t actually required for your B0396 kit. The IMX219-based cameras use the native NVIDIA camera driver that you enable through jetson-io, not the Arducam kernel module. So uninstalling that package shouldn’t have broken anything related to your current camera setup, and it’s not the cause of the original problem.
That said, could you describe exactly how you uninstalled it? Just want to make sure nothing else got pulled out alongside it by accident.
Also — we still need those photos of your hardware connections. At this stage with the driver properly configured via jetson-io and all four cameras connected, the issue is most likely something physical: a ribbon cable not fully seated, a pin alignment issue, or the HAT not making proper contact with the Jetson board. Photos would really help move this forward.