Hey everyone, I’m having trouble getting two IMX708 wide-angle cameras working on a Raspberry Pi 5 through the Arducam Multi-Camera Adapter Module V2.2 (the B012001 multiplexer board).
Setup:
Pi 5 running Bookworm V12 (kernel 6.12.34)
Two imx708_wide cameras
Multi-Camera Adapter Module V2.2
I followed the Quick Start Guide on the Arducam docs site and the GitHub repo (Multi_Camera_Adapter_V2.2_python). I’m using the config.txt they provided in the guide.
When I try to capture an image with rpicam-still -t 0 --camera 0, it throws an error. Same thing happens when I run sudo ./init_camera.sh — that script also fails.
I checked sudo dmesg | grep arducam — nothing. sudo dmesg | grep imx — also nothing. It’s like the Pi doesn’t see the cameras at all through the adapter. Anyone run into this?
Welcome to the forum. A couple of things to help narrow this down:
Can you post the exact error messages you’re getting from both rpicam-still and init_camera.sh? Screenshots or text dumps are fine.
Also, the fact that dmesg | grep imx returns nothing is a strong signal — normally you’d expect to see sensor probe messages if the cameras were being detected properly. The camera-mux-4port overlay should be initializing those sensors during boot.
Which config.txt are you using exactly? If you can share the relevant dtoverlay lines (especially the camera-mux-4port line), that would help.
Swapping the ribbon cables between the adapter and the cameras — no change.
Re-imaging the SD card with a fresh Bookworm install and going through the quick start guide from scratch — same result.
But here’s the interesting part: if I disconnect one IMX708 camera from the adapter and plug it directly into the Pi 5’s camera port, it works perfectly. rpicam-vid captures video without any issues. So the cameras themselves are fine — the problem only happens when they go through the multiplexer board.
Thanks for the detailed info — that’s really helpful. You’ve actually already done most of the troubleshooting I would have suggested, and the direct-connection test is a key data point.
I can see two issues here:
1. Incorrect dtoverlay suffix
The config.txt you’re using has cam0-imx708_wide and cam1-imx708_wide. That _wide suffix is not valid for the camera-mux-4port overlay. The correct entry should be:
2. The bigger problem — Pi 5 + IMX708 + multiplexer incompatibility
Unfortunately, even with the corrected dtoverlay, you’re likely going to run into timeout errors. There’s a known compatibility issue where the Raspberry Pi 5’s software/driver stack doesn’t properly support the IMX708 sensor operating through a multiplexer like the Multi-Camera Adapter. The sensor fails to initialize over the mux channel, and you end up with i2c timeout errors similar to what you’re already seeing with init_camera.sh.
This is a driver-level limitation on Pi 5, not something that can be fixed by adjusting the config.txt or swapping cables. I’ve seen this confirmed across several setups now.
There is a hardware-based alternative that sidesteps this entirely: the Arducam Quad-Camera Kit for IMX708. It handles camera synchronization at the hardware level rather than through software multiplexing, so it doesn’t run into this driver limitation. I can point you to it if you’re interested, but I wanted to be upfront that the software/config-only route is blocked on Pi 5 for now.
Appreciate the thorough explanation. I was starting to suspect something like that after spending hours on this.
So just to make sure I understand — even after I fix the dtoverlay to remove _wide, the Pi 5 still won’t be able to talk to the IMX708 sensors through the adapter board because the driver doesn’t support that configuration? That’s a bummer.
Is the Quad-Camera Kit the only way forward then? Or is there any chance of a driver update or workaround for the Multi-Camera Adapter on Pi 5 down the line?
That’s correct — fixing the dtoverlay removes the naming error, but it doesn’t change the underlying driver limitation. The IMX708 simply can’t complete its initialization handshake over the multiplexer on Pi 5. You’d go from “camera not detected” errors to i2c timeout errors, which is the same outcome from a practical standpoint.
As for driver updates — I can’t speak to future development timelines, but as of now, this is a known gap and I haven’t seen a software-side resolution announced. If something changes it would likely surface in the Raspberry Pi kernel patches or libcamera updates.
If you want to keep experimenting with your current adapter board, you could try rolling back to an older Pi model (Pi 4 or earlier) where the mux driver behaves differently — but on Pi 5 with Bookworm, you’re stuck at the moment. Sorry I don’t have better news on that front.