Hi all, I’m trying to find an Arducam Linux camera app that can control ePTZ functions and video settings (brightness, contrast, etc.) for my B0497 cameras. I’ve got 3 of them hooked up to an Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin Dev running Ubuntu on ARM64. Is there a dedicated Linux control application for these, or am I missing something?
Welcome! A couple of things right off the bat — the B0497 doesn’t support ePTZ at all, so that’s not something you’ll be able to enable with any tool. For the video settings side of things (brightness, contrast, etc.) on Linux, your best bet is using standard tools like qv4l2 or VLC. Either one will let you tweak those parameters over UVC. There isn’t a dedicated Arducam Linux app for this camera series — it’s standard UVC, so the usual Linux video tools should cover you.
Good to know about Linux, thanks. While I’ve got your attention though — I’m actually running into a bigger problem with these B0497 cameras on the Windows side. I have 6 units total now, and setting the output resolution has been a real pain. On my Win11 laptop, the built-in Camera app lets me change resolution without any issues. But on a newer Win11 PC I have (different Windows build), the resolution option isn’t even there. I tried installing the ‘Arducam USB Camera Shield UI 2.0’ tool, but it doesn’t seem to work at all — clicking ‘Scan for a device’ does absolutely nothing, the CfgFile window stays empty, and hitting ‘Refresh’ just throws a ‘Refresh Error.’ Do I need some specific config file for the B0497? Is there another way to set the resolution on these cameras?
The Arducam USB Camera Shield UI 2.0 won’t work with the B0497 — that tool is specifically built for our Evaluation Kits, and the B0497 is part of the UVC 3.0 camera series, so it’s a mismatch. That explains the scan failures and the empty CfgFile window you’re seeing. For adjusting resolution on the B0497 under Windows, give Potplayer a try. There’s a guide covering the steps here: Start USB3 UVC Camera on Windows - Arducam Wiki
Alright, Potplayer definitely helps — I can now change resolution on 2 of the 3 B0497 cameras I’m testing with. But the 3rd one is giving me nothing. It’s stuck at 1280x720 and the B0497 popup control panel in Potplayer won’t let me change anything on it — resolution, settings, all of it seems frozen or grayed out. The other two cameras respond fine through the same interface. Starting to think this particular unit might just be faulty. Is there a firmware update I can try on it? And how would I go about flashing it?
Before assuming it’s a hardware fault — check whether that problematic camera is showing up as a USB 2.0 (UVC 2.0) device instead of USB 3.0 (UVC 3.0). That would explain exactly what you’re describing: resolution stuck at 1280x720 and settings refusing to change. I’ve seen this a few times where the PC detects the camera at the wrong USB speed and it falls back to limited UVC 2.0 functionality. Have a look through this troubleshooting section: Troubleshooting - Arducam Wiki — it walks through identifying the issue and the steps to resolve it.
Went through the troubleshooting guide and tried re-plugging a bunch of times — no change on that one camera, still locked at 1280x720. Just to paint the full picture: on my Win11 laptop, the built-in Camera app has resolution controls and works fine with all the good cameras. On my newer NUC PC though (it’s a more powerful box, but running a different Windows 11 build), the same MS Camera app doesn’t even expose resolution controls at all — Microsoft apparently stripped that out depending on the build. I’ve thrown a whole pile of other camera tools at the NUC and nothing can change settings on this one stubborn camera. Meanwhile the other 5 B0497s work perfectly across both machines. It’s literally just this single unit.
I’ve sent you the details for setting up a remote diagnostic session via private message — please check your messages and we’ll get that scheduled. Given that this is isolated to 1 out of 6 cameras and the standard troubleshooting (re-plugging, checking USB 3.0 detection, etc.) hasn’t moved the needle, it’s time to take a direct look at what’s happening on that unit. One thing to clarify: the MS Camera app behaving differently between your laptop and NUC is expected — that’s purely a Windows build-level difference and not related to the camera itself. Let’s get connected and I’ll dig into why that one camera won’t cooperate.