Raspberry Pi Forums

I recently got the No IR Camera and it seems it has serious problems.
I used a ESD wristband when handling.
When it shows a preview on screen it is quite dark with dark lines across is.
The still shot is still dark but with no lines.
The video is dark with darker lines across it (same as the preview).

More worrying is that most of the time it causes the Pi to reboot about a second into the video.

I am just using the default settings and specifying a file location and time for the video.

Is there any obvious problem I may be missing before I send this back?

Check the ribbon cable is fully inserted and clipped down on the RPi connector.

Get an IR light source and see if illuminating the scene with that makes any improvement (after sunrise and before sunset, if the weather isn't horrid, there's a free IR source at 93 million miles from here).

Also run
sudo rpi-update
to get the latest firmware and applications to drive the camera.

That does sound like a hardware problem of some kind. When you say the image is dark, are you taking a picture during the daytime? It is not a "night-vision" module, it still needs light to work (which could be a 850nm security-camera IR illuminator but that's the only difference from the normal Pi camera). Also check your power supply is ok, the camera causes your Pi to draw more current than without it. A power supply issue could cause the reboot you mention.

Many thanks for the help with this.

Daylight improved the still picture to a good quality, I had considered that the light bulb wasn't the right sort of light!
Whilst I didn't get the dark lines across with daylight I did this evening with bulb light. Also, it was still crashing frequently when I tried video. Tried a different power supply and that worked. All is now well with the world except I'm kicking myself because I was sure the power supply was 1A and it wasn't, despite it being the one that came with the PI someone had leant me. (I currently have one with a standard camera which is on loan and my own with the No IR filter camera.) I haven't had chance to try the video with daylight yet but I am reasonably confident that it will work.