Using a USB camera deletes /dev/video0

Question

Problem

When I use the USB camera attached to my freshly booted Raspberry Pi 3, I'm able to capture a single image/video. But when I attempt to do this again, the camera (/dev/video0) seems to have disappeared completely... Rebooting allows to camera to be used again, but only for a single iteration.

Additional info

• When I run fswebcam -r 640x480 --no-banner test.jpg to capture an image I get: --- Opening /dev/video0... Trying source module v4l2... /dev/video0 opened. No input was specified, using the first. --- Capturing frame... Captured frame in 0.00 seconds. --- Processing captured image... Disabling banner. Writing JPEG image to 'test.jpg'.

  However, if I run the exact same command again I get: --- Opening /dev/video0... Trying source module v4l2... Error opening device: /dev/video0 open: Device or resource busy Trying source module v4l1... Error opening device: /dev/video0 open: No such file or directory Unable to find a source module that can read /dev/video0.

  And running it a third time gives: --- Opening /dev/video0... stat: No such file or directory

• Also, running ls /dev/video* yields: ls: cannot access '/dev/video*': No such file or directory

• A similar effect is also observed using different methods for capturing the camera feed, e.g. using motion.

Question

So why does this happen and how can I fix it?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

In my case it worked to append the following in the /boot/cmdline.txt:

dwc_otg.fiq_fsm_mask=0x3

and then reboot

Found the answer on the raspberry forum