Hi, I’m having a serious problem with the Arducam driver on my Jetson Nano. As soon as I install the driver, the Nano stops detecting the SD card. It does this even when the camera is NOT connected, so I really don’t think it’s the camera hardware — it looks like something in the camera software. It also works only intermittently, it’s pretty unstable overall.
My setup:
Jetson Nano with B01 board
Arducam Ar0231 (Raspberry Pi Camera series)
I tried removing the driver with:
sudo dpkg -r arducam-nvidia-l4t-kernel
The error report from that removal is attached. Also note the camera is already deployed, so getting pictures of it would mean removing it from its installation. Can you please look into a software fix?
Thanks for the detailed report. Before anything else, could you please run our bug report tool so we can see what’s going on under the hood? On the device, reboot first and then run these one by one:
That will produce an arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Please send that file back as an attachment so we can inspect the kernel/driver logs. Also, what exactly did you see when you ran the dpkg -r command? Any output or error messages?
OK, ran the bug report tool and attached the arducam-bug-report.txt. For the driver removal, here’s basically what came back after:
sudo dpkg -r arducam-nvidia-l4t-kernel
(Reading database …)
Removing arducam-nvidia-l4t-kernel (1.0) …
dpkg: warning: while removing arducam-nvidia-l4t-kernel, directory ‘/lib/modules/…/extra’ not empty so not removed
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-…
After that the SD card is detected again, which is why I keep pointing at the driver. Install the driver → SD card disappears. Remove it → SD card comes back.
That behavior is consistent with a driver/module conflict, so the bug report is helpful. To pin down whether this is board-specific, could you also send us photos of the device? Front and back of the Nano plus the carrier board are enough — you can take them without removing the heat sink. We just want to confirm the exact hardware revision you’re on.
Thanks, these are really useful. We compared your photos against an official NVIDIA Jetson Nano and unfortunately the board in your pictures is NOT an official Nano — it looks like a third-party/cloned embedded device rather than the genuine article.
This matters a lot: the Arducam camera is validated for the official Nano only, and we do not support third-party embedded devices. We tested the camera on an official Nano and it works fine there (we have photos captured from an official Nano for comparison). That would explain why you’re seeing instability and the SD detection problem — the driver is being loaded against hardware/firmware it was never built for.
A couple of things to try:
If you have access to an official Nano, connect the camera to it and access the camera to verify whether the camera itself is defective.
Confirm the Nano type from the device photos (front/back + carrier board). You don’t need to remove the heat sink for that.
If you can get an official Nano, run the camera on it and let us know the result.
Thanks for checking. To be clear, the board is not an official board but it is built like the official B01 board. So it’s a clone/replica of the B01 rather than the genuine one. I’ll reach out to the vendor of this board about the incompatibility. I’ll get back to you if I need more help.
That makes sense, and it lines up exactly with what we found in your photos. To summarize where we landed:
Root cause: the device is a non-official (third-party) Nano-style board. The Arducam Ar0231 is only compatible with the official NVIDIA Jetson Nano and does not support third-party embedded devices, which is why the driver install breaks SD card detection and behaves unreliably.
This is a hardware compatibility issue, not a software bug we can patch on our side.
Recommended path: use an official Nano. Connect the camera to the official Nano and access the camera to confirm the module itself is working/not defective. The same bug report tool (arducam-camera-bug-report-nvidia) still applies there if you hit anything.
Verifying the board type is easiest from front/back photos plus the carrier board; no need to remove the heat sink.
Keep us posted once you hear back from the board vendor or if you get an official Nano to test on. Happy to help further if you need it.
