Hi all, I’m stuck on an IoT project and hoping someone here can help. I’m using an ArduCAM-2MP-Plus (B0067) camera with a Micro:bit V2 board. The plan is to save a picture automatically whenever a motion sensor signal comes in, so I was looking at a serial port tool to grab and save the images. The camera works fine in the MakeCode interface, but when I open the Arducam Mega GUI app and click ‘open port’ I get a ‘parser timeout error’ every time. Has anyone run into this?
Welcome! To help narrow it down, could you post your exact setup? Which board and camera (you gave those), what firmware/library you’re running on the Micro:bit, and which host application you’re using on the PC. Also, is the wiring the same as what works in MakeCode, or did you change anything for the Arduino side?
Sure. Hardware is the ArduCAM-2MP-Plus (B0067) on a Micro:bit V2, same wiring as the MakeCode tutorial that works: 2MP OV2640 Arducam Camera Module for Microbit - Arducam Wiki For software I installed the Arduino IDE, added the micro:bit board in the Boards Manager using the Cytron guide (https://my.cytron.io/tutorial/microbit-with-arduino-ide), installed the arducam_mega library through the Library Manager, then downloaded the Arducam Mega GUI (ArducamMega) from the MEGA-SPI troubleshooting page. I followed the full_featured micro:bit example guide and uploaded it. Then in the GUI, clicking open port gives ‘parser timeout error’.
Thanks. Since it works in MakeCode, the hardware and wiring are almost certainly fine. A ‘parser timeout’ when opening the port usually means the host app is speaking a different protocol than the firmware on the board - basically a repo/host-app mismatch. Which exact host app guide did you follow for the GUI? Can you post the link?
I used the GuiTool guide here: https://www.arducam.com/docs/arducam-mega/arducam-mega-getting-started/packs/GuiTool.html and downloaded ArducamMega from the MEGA-SPI troubleshooting page. That’s the app that throws the parser timeout.
That’s the problem - you were pointed at the wrong repo for the host app. The Mega GUI is not the right one for this camera/board combo, so the parser times out. Use the correct host application instead: ArduCAM_Host_V2.0_Windows from the ArduCAM/Arduino GitHub repo: Arduino/ArduCAM/examples/host_app/ArduCAM_Host_V2.0_Windows at master · ArduCAM/Arduino · GitHub Give that a try and let us know if the port opens.
Thanks, that sorted the parser timeout - the port opens now and I can capture. But this creates a new problem for my project: that host app requires me to manually click ‘capture’ every time. What I actually need is event-driven capture. I’ve got the motion sensor and the camera both connected to the Micro:bit, and when the motion sensor detects movement, the camera should automatically snap and save the photo to my laptop. I looked through the recommended app and it’s all manual. Are there other serial port apps that support fully automatic capture without clicking?
Good to hear the parser error is gone. The automation part is a different kind of problem though - the host app is really just a manual viewer/capture tool. For event-driven capture, the trigger logic has to live in the Micro:bit firmware (detect motion, then capture and push the image over serial on its own), and the laptop side needs something that just listens on the port and saves incoming data to a file without any clicks. Can you share what your current Micro:bit code does when the motion sensor fires? Are you doing that part in MakeCode or in the Arduino sketch? That’ll tell us what’s missing.