Smoke and no camera detection after wiring Arducam camArray per misleading label on Jetson

Nvidia Jetson Cameras
1

Hey everyone, I’m having trouble with my Arducam camArray multi-cam board and I think the silkscreen label on the board is wrong.

Setup:

  • Arducam camArray multi-cam board (the HAT)
  • 2x 2.3MP global shutter cameras attached
  • NVIDIA Jetson (Orin)
  • 6 dupont connectors for wiring

Here’s the label printed on the board:

  . .    grd scl
  . .    5v  sda
  . .    5v  3v3

But when I look at what the Jetson GPIO header expects, this seems backwards. I’m pretty sure the correct layout should actually be:

  . .    5v 3v3
  . .    5v  sda
  . .    grd scl

Am I reading this wrong, or did I get a board with a misprinted label?

2

Well… this got worse. I wired the 6 dupont connectors according to the label printed on the board and powered everything up. There was smoke coming from the board and/or the cameras within seconds. I pulled power immediately.

Now when I run:

ls /dev/video0

It doesn’t register anything. The cameras are completely gone. No /dev/video0 at all.

I haven’t tried anything else yet — wanted to check here before I make things worse. Any ideas what happened and whether this board is salvageable?

3

Hi, thanks for the detailed report. I’ve looked into this and I can confirm — the label on your Multi-cam board is actually correct. The silkscreen is not misprinted.

What’s likely happening here is that the label on the board is indicating which pins on the HAT itself correspond to which signals — but the orientation of how the HAT mates with the Jetson GPIO header matters. If the dupont wiring was done pin-to-pin based on the label without accounting for the physical orientation of the HAT when attached to the Jetson, the 5V, 3V3, and GND lines can end up swapped, which would explain the smoke.

Can you take a look at the official wiring diagram here? It shows the correct way the HAT board attaches to the Jetson GPIO header:

https://docs.arducam.com/Nvidia-Jetson-Camera/Multi-Camera-CamArray/quick-start/#plug-camarray-hat-into-jetson-nano-gpio-header

That diagram should clarify how the HAT sits on the GPIO header and how the pin mapping actually works in practice.

4

I’m attaching a visual reference here that shows the correct HAT-to-Jetson GPIO header connection:

camarray-hat-gpio-connection

Notice the orientation — the HAT board sits on top of the Jetson GPIO header in a specific way, and the pin mapping follows that physical layout. The label on the board makes sense once you account for this.

5

Ah… yeah, I see it now. I completely misinterpreted how the board orients on the GPIO header, and I ended up wiring the dupont connectors in a way that sent 5V where it shouldn’t have gone. That explains the smoke.

That’s on me — the label is fine, my wiring was not. Thanks for the diagram, that clears it up. Now I need to figure out whether my board and cameras survived the incident. Since /dev/video0 isn’t showing up, I’m guessing something got fried. Appreciate the quick help.