New lessons learned

General
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I recently run into several issues when building a new OFM. I would like to share my experience with the OFM community hoping will help. I plan to update this post later adding some pictures and links to my BOM of this later if that helps too.

I buy most of my supplies on Amazon because I find good deal. The filament, electronics, nuts and bolts, etc. I like to experiment with the OFM platform and adapt it for different project. During those experimental modifications I run into multiple issues.

Lesson 1: Beware of counterfeit defective cameras: I bought 2 “original” 8MP raspberry pi compatible cameras (US$24) that never worked. The cameras were detected by the Rpi. Meaning that using “vcgencmd get_camera” code I get “supported=1 detected=1” output. However, the OFM software does not stream. Looking for a solution online I read on some post that other people run into this problems too. The camera boards don’t look right. The cables are different color. They attributed this to counterfeit poorly manufactured cameras due to the chip shortage. Hence, I returned the cameras and got my refund.

Lesson 2: Arducam is not compatible with Raspberry pi. So I exchanged those 2 cameras for 2 Arducam cameras (US$24) . In the past I was lucky to make 5MP Arducams work without mayor effort. This was not the case for the 8MP which gave the following error:

mmal: mmal_vc_component_enable: failed to enable component: ENOSPC
mmal: camera component couldn't be enabled
mmal: main: Failed to create camera component
mmal: Failed to run camera app. Please check for firmware updates

Long story short, Arducam lack a component (DRM chip) that makes them not fully compatible out of the box with RPi. Returned and refunded.

Lesson 3: Spare a haedache and buy the original. Now I go to my electronics store (Microcenter) and buy one original 8MP RPi camera (US$24)…it works. End of story.

Lesson 4: After darkness comes the light. I have a similar experience with LEDs. I got a small batch of LEDs that worked fine when I started building my first OFM several years ago. I burnt and broke some during my initial learning days. Since I count not find those same one on Amazon anymore I bought the Chinese manufactured ones with the same specs…or so I thought. I went through 3 different brands and all gave me bad results. Blue or green backgrounds, too bright, to0 dark, inconsistent light. I had enough!. I found another set of 100 LEDS within specs (3V, 3000K, etc) that solved the problem.

…to be continued

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Thanks for posting this. The alternative camera modules are ones I’ve mostly not tried, because I thought it wasn’t hugely likely they’d work. It is really helpful to hear from someone who has tried, and can therefore verify that they don’t work!

We’d love to make the LED part of the build more consistent (I think we specify an LED part number, though it may not be all that easy to source). A possibility is replacing the LED with a small PCB, which eliminates the need for hand soldering - this is a work in progress, but is something we’d like to include in the eventual v7 release.

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I came across this issue too! Most alternative camera modules using IMX219 (same sensor as PiCam v2) only work with the LibCamera library and not the older Raspicam library used in the older versions of Raspbian. I was able to get camera feed using the latest Bullseye release of Raspbian and using LibCamera.
But there is none of the nice features in OFM and no color correction on still images. Overall I would avoid the alternative camera modules since they are too much of a hassle and don’t work with the OFM software now.

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It would be nice to have greater camera compatibility, don’t you think? Arducam has so many more options like a 108mp one! This will bring the OFM to a whole new level

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Yes, it would be great to have more options! I think it will be a lot easier to accommodate alternative camera modules once the OS version OFM runs on is updated. It would really help with not only cost but customizability. Though it must be a lot of work to change a library.

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Yes - updating to Bullseye is something I’d like to do, but it will involve a lot of changes, because the picamera library is relied on in a lot of different places. v3 of the software will make it easier to make the switch, but it’s a long-term project. Even once it’s done, I am not sure whether the alternative (i.e. non-IMX219) camera modules will ever work as well as the official modules. libcamera solves some of the issues, but it doesn’t, on its own, guarantee that you’ll get the same level of VPU-assisted image processing that’s available for the official camera modules.

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