RPi camera stops functioning after Adeept Motor Hat is plugged in

Question

This is my first time posting a question and I am a new RPi user. I have bought a robotics kit from Adeept (The PiCar B) and I am facing issues with getting the RPi camera to work when the Motor Hat is plugged in. Link to Adeept : https://www.adeept.com/adeept-mars-rover-picar-b-wifi-smart-robot-car-kit-for-raspberry-pi-4-3-model-b-b-2b-speech-recognition-opencv-target-tracking-stem-kit_p0117.html

I have tested the camera (without the Motor Hat) and seems to function just fine. The camera cable goes through a slot in the Motor Hat and connects to the RPi 4 terminal. I am using the raspistill command to determine whether the camera is working or not. I have included the screenshot of the issue I am facing; I have connected the motor hat and tried to create an image file "5.jpg". Doing so results in 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

Running the command "vcgencmd get_camera" results in supported=1 detected=1, which means that the camera is detected by the RPi 4.

Without the motor hat, I have been able to generate all of the jpg files that is shown in the picture above; "abcd.jpg, test.jpg, tester.jpg ,etc etc"

Can someone please help me out?

Answer 1

I had something similar when trying to use the generic camera commands through ssh during the setup process.

I could tell that something was taking control of the camera on boot. Turned out to be the on board web server.

Try opening a browser and typing in:

XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:5000 where XXX... is the private IP of the robot and it is on the same network as the device you are controlling from.

Hope that helps...

FYI - I was controlling an adeept PiCar B from a Raspberry Pi 400 via Chromium, having built OpenCV from source on the 400...