Hi all, I’ve got an Arducam 1MP*4 Quadrascopic OV9281 Global Shutter Monochrome Camera Bundle Kit running on a Raspberry Pi 4B. When I run libcamera commands like --still, it works the first time, but any second run fails with Camera frontend has timed out ! and then it tries a restart on the second video. The first video is always fine. What’s odd is the -jpeg function doesn’t hit this at all — it keeps working. I set this up following the Arducam online help for libcamera. It used to work and then just quit working. Has anyone run into this?
That’s a strange one. The --still failing only on the second run while -jpeg is fine suggests the camera frontend isn’t being torn down cleanly between captures. Before we dig in, can you share the exact libcamera command you’re running? And have you tried a full reboot since this started — does it still fail on the second run after a reboot?
I did reboot, same thing. I found a similar report on the picamera2 GitHub issues (#748) about Arducam cameras, but none of that helped. I also tried running the arducam bug report tool twice: the first run completed fine and saved arducam-bug-report 1.txt, but the second run threw an error and I had to interrupt it. My command is basically libcamera-still with my usual output options.
Let’s get a clean bug report so I can see the state of the pipeline after that failure. Please follow these steps exactly:
- Reboot your device.
- Download the bug report tool:
wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/Dion4cen/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/Tool/arducam-camera-bug-report
- Set executable permissions:
chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report
- Run the tool:
./arducam-camera-bug-report
This outputs an arducam-bug-report.txt file in the current directory. Send that file over so I can take a look.
Okay, rebooted and ran it as instructed. It generated arducam-bug-report.txt without any problem this time, so I’ve sent the file to you in a private message. The fact that the bug report tool also glitched on its second run earlier feels related to the whole second-run timeout thing.
Thanks, I’ve got the bug report. Nothing in there points to an obvious root cause yet, so rather than guess, let’s do a live remote session and reproduce it together. I’ve sent you the remote support details and a meeting link via private message — please check your inbox. When you join we can watch the second-run failure happen in real time.
Got the private message. I’m ready in about an hour. Just a heads up, I have no way to speak on the Pi, so we’ll need to use the chat inside the remote tool or the call link you sent. I’ve confirmed my remote access details back to you privately.
Sounds good, chat works fine if there’s no audio. To sum up where we are: libcamera-still succeeds once, then the second run fails with Camera frontend has timed out !, while -jpeg is unaffected. The clean bug report didn’t reveal the cause, so the remote session is the next step to capture what’s happening live. I’ll meet you at the scheduled time and we’ll take it from there.