Libcamera Camera frontend timed out on second run with OV9281 quad camera Raspberry Pi 4B

Raspberry Pi Cameras
1

I’m running into a strange issue with libcamera on my quad camera setup. I’ve been following the Arducam online help for libcamera, and the -still command only works once. The first capture runs fine, but on the second run I get:

“Camera frontend has timed out !”

and then it tries to restart on the second video. After that it won’t capture again. The first video is always fine though. I also noticed the -jpeg function doesn’t have this problem at all - it only happens with the -still path. Anyone else seen this?

2

Thanks for the report. Could you confirm the exact camera kit and the platform you’re running on? Also, are you using a particular set of setup instructions? That’ll help us reproduce what you’re seeing.

3

Sure. The kit is the 1MP*4 Quadrascopic OV9281 Global Shutter Monochrome Camera Bundle Kit for Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson Nano/Xavier NX/AGX Orin/Orin Nano/Orin NX. Platform is a Raspberry Pi 4B, and I followed the Arducam online help for libcamera.

4

Thanks. There’s a similar issue tracked over at [BUG]latest picamera2/libcamera version causes timeouts for externally triggered HQ camera · Issue #748 · raspberrypi/picamera2 · GitHub that might be related, but we haven’t pinned down the root cause yet.

Could you do a couple of things so we can dig deeper? First, please reboot the device. Then grab some photos of the hardware connections - both at the Raspberry Pi end and at the camera end.

Also, please run our bug report tool. Download it with:

wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/Dion4cen/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/Tool/arducam-camera-bug-report

Then make it executable:

chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report

And run it:

./arducam-camera-bug-report

This will generate an arducam-bug-report.txt file in the current directory. Please attach that file along with the connection photos.

5

Thanks for the steps. A bit more background: this kit actually worked before and then somehow quit working, which is odd.

Environment for reference:

  • Product: 1MP*4 Quadrascopic OV9281 Global Shutter Monochrome Camera Bundle Kit for Raspberry Pi, NVIDIA Jetson Nano/Xavier NX/AGX Orin/Orin Nano/Orin NX
  • Platform: Raspberry Pi 4B
  • Instructions: Arducam online help with libcamera

The error I keep seeing is: “Camera frontend has timed out !”

I ran the bug detector twice as requested. The first run was fine and produced arducam-bug-report1.txt. But the second run, immediately after, threw an error and had to be interrupted - that one produced arducam-bug-report2.txt. Looks like the same first-use-works/second-use-fails pattern. I also came across the similar Arducam camera issues here: [BUG]latest picamera2/libcamera version causes timeouts for externally triggered HQ camera · Issue #748 · raspberrypi/picamera2 · GitHub

Here are the photos and reports:

Camera_Connections_camarray.JPG
Camera_Connections_Camera.JPG
Connection_to_camarray.JPG
Connection_to_RaspberryPi.JPG
Error_Message.JPG
arducam-bug-report1.txt
arducam-bug-report2.txt

6

Thanks for uploading everything. From the photos I can see the camera connections and camarray, the connection to the camarray, and the connection to the Raspberry Pi.

The bug report tool behavior is telling - the first run completed and produced arducam-bug-report1.txt, but the second run right after errored out and had to be interrupted, producing arducam-bug-report2.txt. That matches the libcamera symptom you described: first capture works, the next one fails.

Right now the root cause is still undetermined - the second bug report failure may well be tied to the “Camera frontend has timed out !” behavior on subsequent captures. We’re still analyzing the attached images and both bug report files (arducam-bug-report1.txt and arducam-bug-report2.txt). I’ll post back once we have more.