UCTRONICS B0262 IMX477 camera on Pi Zero W shows intermittent chip read failure -5

Nvidia Jetson Cameras
1

Hi, I’m having trouble with a Raspberry Pi camera I bought. It’s a UCTRONICS B0262, which I believe is the IMX477 12MP module, and I’m running it on a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The problem is the camera kind of works, but only intermittently — it’s really unstable. Sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn’t. Has anyone seen known issues with this combination of RPi Zero W and the Arducam camera module? Any pointers would be appreciated.

2

Hey, thanks for posting. That combo should work but the Zero W is picky about the software setup and the ribbon cable. Can you grab some logs so we can see what’s actually happening? Please run this and paste the output:

dmesg | grep -i imx477

Also, what OS/software are you running (Raspberry Pi OS version, and did you install the driver for the IMX477)? And have you tried any other camera on the same board to rule out the Pi itself?

3

Sure, here’s what dmesg gives me. It looks like it’s failing to read the chip:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ dmesg | grep -i imx477
[   11.022535] imx477 10-001a: failed to read chip id 477, with error -5
[   11.024253] imx477: probe of 10-001a failed with error -5

So it detects the sensor address on i2c but then the read of the chip id fails with -5. That’s about as far as I got.

4

OK, that error (-5) on the chip id read usually points at either the cable/connector not seated properly or the wrong driver/overlay being active. Before we go deeper, did you get a chance to test a different camera on the same Zero W? That tells us whether the board itself is fine.

5

Yeah, I did swap tests. I put in an official Raspberry Pi HQ camera and it seems to work ok. When I go back to the Arducam module it’s not working consistently. So it really looks like it’s specific to the Arducam module rather than the Pi Zero W. That’s why I was asking whether there are any known issues with this combo — RPi Zero W plus the Arducam IMX477 module. Anything I should check first?

6

Got it — thanks, that rules out the board. Let’s collect full system and camera diagnostics so I can see the overlay, config, and i2c state. Please run the Arducam camera bug report tool:

wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/ketai-dhr/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/tools/arducam-camera-bug-report
chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report
./arducam-camera-bug-report

This will drop an arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Please attach that file here so I can take a look.

7

Ran the tool exactly like you said:

wget -O arducam-camera-bug-report https://github.com/ketai-dhr/arducam-camera-bug-report/releases/download/tools/arducam-camera-bug-report
chmod +x ./arducam-camera-bug-report
./arducam-camera-bug-report

It generated the arducam-bug-report.txt in the current directory. Attaching it here:

arducam-bug-report.txt

Let me know what you see in there.

8

Thanks for the report. Given the intermittent detection and that -5 chip id read, the most likely culprit is a loose or marginal connection cable. Please try two things:

  1. Power everything down, then re-plug (reseat) the camera connection cable on both ends — the board side and the camera side. Make sure it’s fully seated and the contacts are oriented correctly. A slightly loose FPC cable is a very common cause of exactly this intermittent behavior.

  2. Then go through the official 12MP IMX477 camera documentation to confirm the overlay/config:
    Redirecting...

If it still fails after reseating and checking the docs, post back with a fresh dmesg | grep -i imx477 and we’ll dig further.