Hi everyone, I’ve got an Arducam B0267 kit and it arrived with no instructions at all. I have 4 monochrome OV2981 camera sensors connected to a Raspberry Pi, but I’m honestly not sure how I’m supposed to talk to the hardware from my laptop — HDMI, ethernet, or serial? And what software do I even need to run the cameras? I read through this quick-start page: Quick Start Guide for Arducam CamArray HAT Kit - Arducam Wiki but it didn’t really help me figure any of this out.
Just to clear up the platform question first: the B0267 module is only supported on the Raspberry Pi. It can’t be connected directly to a laptop — there’s no supported laptop connection method for it, so you won’t find HDMI/ethernet/serial-to-laptop instructions because that isn’t how this module works. It has to run on the Pi itself.
Sorry, I think I worded that badly — I do want to run it on the Raspberry Pi, not on the laptop. What I can’t find is documentation on how to actually communicate with the Pi and connect it to a monitor once everything is set up. Is there more detailed documentation for that part?
No worries. For the driver installation and accessing the Pivariety multi-camera setup, have a look at this specific section of the quick-start guide: Quick Start Guide for Arducam CamArray HAT Kit - Arducam Wiki — that section covers installing the driver and accessing the cameras.
Thanks. I followed that and I’m a bit confused on step 4. The doc shows the driver install command as ./install_pivariety_pkgs.sh -p kernel_driver, but I ran it as ./install_pivariety_pkgs.sh kernel_driver without the -p. Does that matter? Also, when I capture an image with libcamera-still -t 5000 -n -p test.jpg, the JPEG does get saved, but I see this error in the output: ERROR IPAProxy ipa_proxy.cpp:140 Configuration file 'arducam-pivariety_mono.json' not found for IPA module 'rpi/vc4'. On a side note, I also need the commands to grab raw data and to change exposure and gain settings. Is there a document that lists those?
That error aside, the fact that the JPEG saved means steps 1-4 are basically working. The IPAProxy error about ‘arducam-pivariety_mono.json’ not found for ‘rpi/vc4’ is harmless — you can ignore it, it doesn’t affect normal usage. One thing to correct: open /boot/config.txt, find the line dtoverlay=arducam, change it to dtoverlay=arducam-pivariety, and reboot the Pi so it takes effect. For raw capture, exposure, and gain controls, those are all covered in the libcamera documentation here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/camera_software.html — you’ll find the relevant options there.