Hi, I noticed the documentation page for the Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat (CamArray) looks like it was recently changed, and honestly the new version seems off to me. At one point it states “A Pivariety driver should not be needed.” That doesn’t match my understanding of how this hat works. As far as I know a Pivariety driver shouldn’t be part of the setup for the Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat at all. I’m not sure if the new doc is just poorly worded or genuinely wrong. If anyone has the old version of this document, could you share it? I’d like to compare against what the page used to say.
Hi, thanks for flagging this. You’re right that the docs have been reworked — we recently stood up a new documentation website, so a lot of pages have moved and been rewritten, and some wording has changed in the process. The Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat (CamArray) page is one of them. Can you point me at the exact section where it says “A Pivariety driver should not be needed”? A screenshot or a quote of the surrounding paragraph would help me pin down whether it’s a wording problem or an actual content error.
Sure, it’s in the section that walks through the driver/setup. The exact sentence is “A Pivariety driver should not be needed.” What’s confusing me is that the CamArray hat doesn’t use the Pivariety driver in my understanding — it works with the standard Raspberry Pi camera/overlay setup. So either the doc is describing a different product, or something changed that I’m not aware of. Do you mean we do not need to install the Pivariety driver anymore? I want to be sure before I change anything on my setup. If able, could you share the old document with me so I can compare?
To add some context on my side: this is for a research project, and we’re running the Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat on a standard Raspberry Pi. I haven’t changed any code or config yet because I didn’t want to break a working setup based on docs I’m not confident in. So no logs or error messages to share — it’s really a documentation question rather than a runtime failure.
Understood, that helps frame it. To confirm your mention: yes, we did create a brand new documentation website, and the Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat / CamArray page is among the pages that got rewritten. That’s the most likely reason the page reads differently than before. On the specific sentence — you’re right to double-check it, because “A Pivariety driver should not be needed” is easy to misread. It’s meant as a statement about that particular driver not being required for that hat, not an instruction to install something. But I agree the phrasing is ambiguous and could be read the opposite way.
Ok that makes more sense, but I still want to be certain. So for the CamArray / Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat, the takeaway is that we do NOT install the Pivariety driver, correct? And the Pivariety driver is only relevant to the Pivariety camera products, not to this hat? If that’s the case, the new doc really should say that more clearly, because as written it’s confusing.
That’s the correct reading: the Pivariety driver applies to Pivariety camera boards, not to the Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat / CamArray. For the hat you use the Raspberry Pi camera stack (the overlays/config used for multi-camera), so no Pivariety driver install is required. I’ll pass the wording feedback along so the new page gets clarified — “A Pivariety driver should not be needed” on its own is too terse and is clearly causing confusion.
Great, thanks for confirming. One more thing — I’d still really like the old version of the document if you have it. The old page had the setup steps in a form I trusted, and I’d like to diff it against the new one to make sure nothing else changed silently (overlays, config.txt entries, that sort of thing). Is the older revision of the page archived anywhere, or can you send it to me?
We don’t have the old page publicly archived, but let me see what I can pull from our side. I’ve sent the previous revision of the CamArray setup docs to you via private message — please check your messages and let me know if it matches what you remember. In the meantime, if you spot any other lines on the new page that seem off, post them here and I’ll cross-check them against the old content.
Got it, I’ll check my messages. Just to summarize where we landed for anyone else reading this thread: the CamArray / Multi-Camera Raspberry Pi hat does not need the Pivariety driver — that sentence in the new docs is what tripped me up. I’ll compare the old revision you sent against the current page and report back if I find any other discrepancies in the setup steps.