No camera found: Arducam camera stopped working on Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi Cameras
1

Hey everyone, I’m having trouble with my Arducam High Resolution Autofocus Camera Module (IMX519) on a Raspberry Pi. It was working fine before but now it just won’t initialize at all. I’ve tried two different camera modules and gone through the installation guide multiple times — no luck.

Here’s my setup:

  • Raspberry Pi
  • uname -a: Linux Betty 6.1.21-v8+ #1642 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr 3 17:24:16 BST 2023 aarch64 GNU/Linux
  • OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)

I’ve been following the official docs at: 16MP IMX519 - Arducam Wiki

Whenever I try to use the camera I just get the dreaded “No camera found” error. Since it worked before and then suddenly stopped, I’m wondering if anyone’s seen this kind of thing? Could it be a hardware failure or am I missing something obvious?

2

Sorry to hear about the trouble. Before we jump to any conclusions about hardware failure, let’s gather some diagnostics first — that’ll help narrow things down.

Can you do the following:

  1. Take a couple of clear photos of the hardware connection — one showing the ribbon cable connected to the Raspberry Pi side, and another showing the camera module side. This helps rule out physical connection issues.

  2. Reboot the Pi, just to make sure we’re starting fresh.

  3. Download and run our bug report tool. Run these commands:

wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/Dion4cen/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/Tool/arducam-camera-bug-report

chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report

./arducam-camera-bug-report

This will generate an arducam-bug-report.txt file in your current directory. Attach that file here along with the photos and I’ll take a look.

3

Thanks for the quick reply. Here’s what I’ve got:

Photo of the hardware connection:

image.png

And here’s the bug report file: arducam-bug-report.txt

Let me know if you spot anything odd.

4

Thanks for uploading those. I’ve gone through the photo and the bug report, and I think I see the issue.

Looking at your photo, it appears the ribbon cable might be flipped over to the wrong side. This is actually a really common one — the cable can look like it’s seated properly even when it’s oriented incorrectly, and it’ll give you exactly the “No camera found” error you’re seeing.

This also fits with your timeline: if the camera was working before and then stopped after being reconnected, it’s very likely the cable got flipped during that reconnection.

Give this a try:

  1. Disconnect the ribbon cable from both ends — the Raspberry Pi side and the camera module side.
  2. Flip the cable over (so the side that was facing up is now facing down, and vice versa).
  3. Reconnect it securely on both ends — make sure the contacts are oriented correctly and the cable is fully inserted into both connectors.

After that, reboot the Pi and your camera should be detected normally again. Let me know how it goes!