Hi everyone, I just picked up an Arducam multiple camera adapter that supports 4 cameras and I’m trying to figure out if it’s actually possible to record a video from all 4 cameras at once. I haven’t written any code yet, I’m basically at the very start here — just want to know if this is something the hardware/software can do before I go down a rabbit hole. Has anyone managed to capture video from the 4 cameras simultaneously?
Hey, thanks for posting. Before I answer, can you tell me a bit more about your setup? Specifically:
- Which exact Arducam multiple camera adapter are you using (and roughly which revision)?
- Which host board are you running it on?
- Are you expecting the 4 cameras to record as a single combined video, or 4 separate video streams saved at the same time?
That last one matters a lot for how the capture pipeline would be set up.
It’s the Arducam multiple camera adapter for 4 cameras, that’s the product I bought. I’m honestly not sure yet whether I want one combined video or 4 separate files — whichever is achievable I guess. I was kind of assuming something like 4 separate streams, but I’m open to whatever works.
I don’t have any code yet, so no logs or errors to share. I just wanted to know if simultaneous 4-camera recording is even supported before I start building around it.
Thanks, that helps. To be upfront with you: this specific use case — recording video from all 4 cameras on the multiple camera adapter — isn’t something we’ve actually tried on our side in the way you’re describing. Because we haven’t tested that exact setup, I can’t give you an accurate confirmation that it works or give you a guaranteed answer either way. I’d rather tell you that than guess.
What I can point you to is an official Python example script that Arducam wrote for recording video with our HAT board. It’s a good reference for the recording/capture mechanics, even though it wasn’t written or validated for the 4-camera adapter scenario:
https://github.com/edward-ardu/picamera2_examples/blob/main/Recorded_video.py
You could look at how it opens the camera, configures the encoder and writes the output file — that part is reusable.
Okay, that’s fair, I appreciate you being straight with me instead of just saying yes. So just to be clear on what you’re saying: the script you linked records video from a HAT board, but nobody has actually confirmed the 4-camera adapter can record video at the same time?
And if I wanted to try it anyway, would the approach be to adapt that script and just create multiple camera/encoder instances, one per camera? Or is the structure of that script only meant for a single camera?
You’ve got it exactly right. Two things to separate here:
- The 4-camera multiple camera adapter recording video: not validated by us, so I can’t confirm it works. No confirmed answer for that specific setup.
- Recording video with the Arducam HAT board: there’s a working official example, the script I linked above. That one is the reference to follow.
As for adapting it — the script is written around a single capture/encoder pipeline, so it’s a reference for the recording flow rather than a drop-in 4-camera solution. If you do try extending it, watch out for resource contention (ISP, encoder, memory bandwidth) since running 4 pipelines at once is very different from 1. But that part is untested on our end, so treat it as something to experiment with rather than a supported configuration.
If you get something running and hit errors, post your code and logs here and we can take a look at the specifics.