@Damobius if you use the Raspberry Pi imager and go for the current 64 bit build (not the default) you’ll be set with Libcamera. I don’t know if you had a reason for Debian, but if this will only be a sky cam, no sense making it hard :)
@MookyTroubadour I'm using the imager and tried both the 32-bit and 64-bit flavors (they're both Debian-based from what I understand). The only camera settings I can find are for a "legacy camera." Libcamera will partially install but fails because since dependencies are missing, so I'm assuming it's not there. I read somewhere also that they deprecated native camera support with the latest version, but I might have misinterpreted.
@MookyTroubadour The other thing I wonder about is whether perhaps either the camera port, ribbon, or camera itself are malfunctioning so it's not showing up on any config lists. Do you have any experience with that? Do those options only show if the camera is detected?
@MookyTroubadour I guess I could try installing a legacy version and see what that looks like...
@Damobius I kinda got threaded elsewhere in a reply, but try “libcamera-hello” as a test. Libcamera should be good to go, provided you have NOT enabled legacy camera interface in Raspi-config :)
@MookyTroubadour I'll double check that. I was playing with enabling and disabling and not sure where I left off with the current image. Thanks for the clarification! I'm still at the "knows just enough to be dangerous" stage here 😄😄
@Damobius howdy- I suspect you’re confusing raspi-still and libcamera architectures. The old (and containing copyrighted bits of code) camera functionality was raspi-still. It’s being deprecated in favor of the 100% open source libcamera. One big distinction is that Libcamera works at a different kernel level (I may be oversimplifying or missing some technical nuance in saying this), but when you run raspi-config, you do NOT want legacy interface for camera enabled.
@Damobius and the libcamera binaries should be good to go. I imaged a new camera setup just this week, and the only additional binary I need is ImageMagick (for datestamping the pics). I remember you saying you were using some other-than-raspberry camera, like an Arducam or similar, and those are (as far as I am aware) supposed to work the same as the Raspberry cameras.
@Damobius when it’s connected you should be able to open a terminal/ssh and give it “libcamera-hello” and see something. Here’s the docs: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/camera_software.html
@MookyTroubadour hey there. We're taking it slow. Had some power supply issues up front (didn't realize it needs a full 3A to run and all our
USB adapters were under that...picked up a 4A supply). Still trying to get libcamera installed. The RPi Debian build seems to have really diminished camera support out of the box so having to find our way through package installs that support libcamera. Mostly just finding time to devote to it 🤷♂️.