Taking Photos with Arducam 12MP PTZ Camera - libcamera-still vs. PTZ-Camera-Controller

[pierlino]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a project that requires taking photos with the Arducam 12MP 477P Pan Tilt Zoom camera (Arducam 12MP Pan Tilt Zoom PTZ Camera for Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano). I’m currently using libcamera-still with a 64MP camera, but the official Arducam documentation (Quick start - Arducam Wiki) suggests using the PTZ-Camera-Controller (GitHub - ArduCAM/PTZ-Camera-Controller) and picamera2 for PTZ functionality.

My questions are:

1. Can I use libcamera-still to take photos with the Arducam PTZ camera? If yes, are there any special considerations or limitations?
2. Is it possible to directly set motor positions using libcamera-still? Or do I need to first set the motor position with PTZ-Camera-Controller before running libcamera-still?
3. If I set the motor position with PTZ-Camera-Controller and then launch libcamera-still without specifying focus settings, will libcamera-still overwrite the focus settings?

Unfortunately, testing this myself isn’t an option as the camera won’t arrive for over 10 days, and my project deadline is tight.

Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated!

[Dion]

Hi

@pierlino

Can I use libcamera-still to take photos with the Arducam PTZ camera? If yes, are there any special considerations or limitations?

Yes, but I can get special considerations or limitations. You can just treat it as a native imx477 camera which does not need to install Arducan customized libcamera.

@pierlino

Is it possible to directly set motor positions using libcamera-still? Or do I need to first set the motor position with PTZ-Camera-Controller before running libcamera-still?

No, you need to run the python demo we provide in the document to control the motor positions.
https://docs.arducam.com/Raspberry-Pi-Camera/Pan-Tilt-Zoom-Camera/quick-start/#step-3-run-the-demo

@pierlino

If I set the motor position with PTZ-Camera-Controller and then launch libcamera-still without specifying focus settings, will libcamera-still overwrite the focus settings?

Yes.

[pierlino]

I appreciate your previous answer, but I have one clarification question.

You confirmed that libcamera can “reset” focus settings set by pTZ_Camera_Controller. However, this assumes libcamera-still can control PTZ motors, which I believe is not the case. Could you please clarify this point?