Hi everyone. I just picked up the Arducam 12MP 4x IMX477 Quadrascopic Camera Bundle Kit for Raspberry Pi / NVIDIA Jetson Nano. Before I go too deep, does this IMX477 quad cam HAT work with the legacy camera stack? I was hoping to use the PiCamera library for capturing different exposures, so if the legacy stack works that would make things a lot easier for me. Also, any pointers on how to get started with this package?
Welcome! Short answer: no, the IMX477 quad cam HAT won’t work with the legacy camera stack. This board was developed on the new libcamera stack, so the legacy stack can’t even detect the camera module. That means the PiCamera library isn’t an option here. The module is compatible with Picamera2, so use that for capturing instead of picamera.
Thanks, that makes sense. I’ve managed to get the quad camera board running on a Raspberry Pi 4 now, but I’ve hit another issue. I want to set different exposure times and gains for each of the four cameras individually. Is that possible? I found a related thread about a stereo camera bundle not being detected (Arducam 12MP*2 Synchronized Stereo Camera Bundle with RPi 4 camera not detected - #29 by mahagh) but couldn’t find a clear answer for this.
Unfortunately that approach isn’t feasible with this board. All four cameras are controlled by the same I2C transfer signal, so exposure time and gain can’t be set to different values per camera. Whatever value you set will apply to all four cameras at once, and they will all change to the same value.
Understood. So if all four cameras always share the same exposure, can I at least do multi-exposure capturing where all four use the same value at each moment? My plan in Python is something like this: exposures = [250000, 125000, 66667, 33333, 16667, 8000, 4000, 2000]. I’d capture four images at 250000, then four at 125000, and so on down the list. The catch is that the PiCamera library needs the legacy stack, which doesn’t work with this quad-cam. Is there a supported way to do this?
That kind of multi-exposure capture setup falls outside what standard support covers, so it would be treated as a customization. You’re correct that picamera requires the legacy camera stack and won’t work with the quad-cam, so you’d need an alternative approach on the new stack. For a solution to this specific request, I’d suggest reaching out to Arducam’s sales team for a software consultation ([email protected]), since this is a customization request rather than a standard configuration.
Thanks. I’ve started working with Picamera2 now, but I’m running into a problem with the process. I posted the details over here: Picamera2 and libcamera Issue. Basically libcamera/Picamera2 is giving me trouble while setting things up.
To recap where we are: the quad cam HAT is libcamera-only, so picamera and the legacy stack are off the table, and per-camera exposure/gain differences aren’t possible because all four cameras share the same I2C signal. The multi-exposure capture with shared values is a customization beyond standard support. Now that you’re on Picamera2, could you share the specific error message or output you’re seeing in that new thread? Once we have those details we can dig into the libcamera issue from there.