Help Needed with Camera Issue on Jetson TX2 – "Error: Camera could not be opened"

Hello everyone,

I am facing an issue with my camera on the Jetson TX2, and I hope someone here can assist me. My goal is to use the camera in a Python script with OpenCV, but so far, I haven’t been able to get it working.

Setup:

  • Board: NVIDIA Jetson TX2
  • Camera: MIPI-CSI camera (ov5693)
  • OS: Ubuntu 18.04 with NVIDIA JetPack 4.x
  • Python Version: 3.9 (via Conda environment)
  • OpenCV Version: 4.5.5 (headless, installed via pip)
  • The camera is visible under /dev/video0.

Problem Description:

  1. When trying to open the camera in my Python script, I get the error:

bash:

Error: Camera could not be opened.

2.Relevant code snippet*:

python

CopyEdit

pipeline = (
    "nvarguscamerasrc ! video/x-raw(memory:NVMM), width=1280, height=720, format=NV12, framerate=30/1 ! "
    "nvvidconv flip-method=2 ! video/x-raw, format=BGRx ! videoconvert ! appsink"
)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(pipeline, cv2.CAP_GSTREAMER)

if not cap.isOpened():
    print("Error: Camera could not be opened.")
    return
  1. When testing the camera with Cheese, it returns:
Error during camera setup: No device found
  1. Running v4l2-ctl --list-devices outputs:
vi-output, ov5693 2-0036 (platform:15700000.vi:2):
    /dev/video0
  1. When using guvcview, it shows:
V4L2_CORE: Error opening device /dev/video0: video capture not supported.

Steps I’ve Tried:

  • Updated drivers with sudo apt-get install nvidia-l4t-graphics.
  • Checked the camera with v4l2-ctl --list-formats (no errors).
  • Tested with the GStreamer pipeline (see code above).
  • Ensured user permissions are set (added the user to the video group).
  • Verified that no other application is blocking the camera.

Questions:

  1. Are there known issues with the ov5693 camera on the Jetson TX2?
  2. Do I need additional drivers or special GStreamer settings for this camera?
  3. How can I ensure that /dev/video0 is working correctly in V4L2 mode?
  4. Are there specific debugging tools or logs I can use to identify the root cause?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your support! 🙏

hello davidschaefer2005,

may I know which JP-4 release version you’re working with?
you may double check the release tag, $ cat /etc/nv_tegra_release for confirmation.

let’s narrow down the issue,
please see-also developer guide, Approaches for Validating and Testing the V4L2 Driver.
you may test with v4l2 IOCTL to fetch the camera stream,
for instance,
$ v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-fmt-video=width=1920,height=1080,pixelformat=RG10 --set-ctrl bypass_mode=0 --stream-mmap --stream-count=100