Turning off camera LED

[leol]

Am I right in thinking that since the last firmware update, you can no longer disable the LED by a line in config.txt?

Has the syntax changed or is this facility planed to be reinserted in a future release?

Thanks

Leo

[metaljay]

you are correct, it seems editing the config.txt no longer works

[MattHawkinsUK]

I hope it is re-enabled. The red LED is a pain when you are pointing the camera out a window due to reflections.

Yes you can stick tape over it, but that is a messy solution.

[ludespeedny]

putting in disable_camera_led=1 in my config.txt works for me. Just did it today.

[metaljay]

I imagine you haven't updated your packages yet

[alexeames]

I wonder why it broke?

[znanev]

Yep, I updated this morning and lost control over the camera LED

I read somewhere in the forum that GPIO 5 controls this LED, but couldn't figure out how to set it to 0 from shell. I always get "Operation not permitted" when trying to write "0" to /sys/class/gpio/gpio5/value even though I'm logged in as root.

Anybody knows a software workaround until this gets fixed in the firmware? Taping over the LED is not an option for me...

[alexeames]

Yep, I updated this morning and lost control over the camera LED

I read somewhere in the forum that GPIO 5 controls this LED, but couldn't figure out how to set it to 0 from shell. I always get "Operation not permitted" when trying to write "0" to /sys/class/gpio/gpio5/value even though I'm logged in as root.

Anybody knows a software workaround until this gets fixed in the firmware? Taping over the LED is not an option for me...

It is GPIO 5. I've tried it out in a live Python environment and with the LED diabled in config.txt, toggling GPIO 5 switches the LED on and off at will. Matt "RaspberryPiSpy" Hawkins published a script earlier in the week. But even he has lost access to it with the update.

I haven't upgraded since last week, so mine are still off I'll be setting a week-long time-lapse later on. That camera's facing a window, so a red LED is not required

[AndrewS]

I've managed to come up with a sort-of workaround... even though the camera LED comes on by default, you can still turn it off from Python. So one approach would be to create a script named 'disablecameraled.py' containing: (this is a cut-down version of the RaspberrySpy script)

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/env python
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setwarnings(False)
GPIO.setup(5, GPIO.OUT, initial=False)

and make it executable with

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chmod +x disablecameraled.py

and then run e.g. the following command line:

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raspivid -d -t 10000 & sudo ./disablecamled.py

which will start raspivid, send it to the background (with & ) and then use Python to turn off the LED while raspivid is still running in the background. On my Pi the LED stays on for about half a second.
Obviously you can replace raspivid with raspistill, and add whatever other command-line-arguments you want...

Andrew

EDIT: P.S. The reason you can toggle GPIO5 with RPi.GPIO and not the bash shell, is because the Python module accesses /dev/mem directly (and prints a warning message, which I've turned off in the code above) whereas the bash shell accesses the GPIO via sysfs (which I guess can't "ignore" the warning message).

EDIT2: I've just checked, and this workaround method still works even if disable_camera_led=1 isn't in /boot/config.txt

[jamesh]

I given Dom a heads up on this this thread - he's going to take a look at it.

[dom]

Should be fixed with rpi-update firmware.

[leol]

Thanks dom, works great now.
Has anything else changed? Still pictures seem sharper now, but could be just because the sun is shinning at last!

Leo

Should be fixed with rpi-update firmware.

[dom]

Thanks dom, works great now.
Has anything else changed? Still pictures seem sharper now, but could be just because the sun is shinning at last!

Stills are now higher resolution. We were previously incorrectly capturing 2Mpixel stills (rather than 5Mpixel).
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 43&t=44879

[leol]

Brilliant! Thanks to you, jamesh, and everyone working on this. The Pi project just gets better and better.

Thanks dom, works great now.
Has anything else changed? Still pictures seem sharper now, but could be just because the sun is shinning at last!

Still are now higher resolution. We were previously incorrectly capturing 2Mpixel stills (rather than 5Mpixel).
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 43&t=44879

[Kojans]

I can confirm that adding:

Code: Select all

disable_camera_led=1

in my /boot/config.txt works to switch of the camera led (2014-01-07 wheezy-raspbian)

[littletinman]

Code: Select all

disable_camera_led=1

does not work in Raspbian Jessie for me. Any alternatives to the python solution?

[6by9]

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disable_camera_led=1

does not work in Raspbian Jessie for me. Any alternatives to the python solution?

What model and revision of board are you using?
Vanilla Raspbian Jessie, or NOOBS? If NOOBS, are you editing the correct config.txt?
Output of "vcgencmd version" and "uname -a" please.
Genuine Pi Foundation camera module, or one of the clones?

This is a function of the GPU firmware not the Linux side, so as long as you set the config option correctly it should just work.
BTW Be aware that on A+ and B+ boards that it is generally GPIO 32 that controls the LED, not GPIO 5.

[littletinman]

I have the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T2U ... detailpage

This is the camera: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E1G ... detailpage

I'm running Rapbian Jessie and can successfully take pictures etc.

I'll have to run those commands later today.

[littletinman]

"vcgencmd version" yields:

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Nov 18 2015 15:48:41
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version 0c9af7cde38e223c95c3404f468db8fc5004495c (clean) (release)

"uname -a" yields:

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Linux piserver 4.1.13-v7+ #826 SMP PREEMPT Fri Nov 13 20:19:03 GMT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

[littletinman]

So... this looks like an issue of PEBKAC.

I was taking pictures for testing in a closed cabinet under my tv so I could see the red clearly in the picture (without getting up and down all the time). Turns out the camera LED was off, I was just seeing the red from my PS3's digital audio out....

[Knightlorish]

I've found with Jessie that disable_camera_led=1 in config.txt disables the camera: cue some frustration dismantling camera from Pi in carefully placed Pi.

Is there a simple way to disable the camera LED using the current Jessie?

[Knightlorish]

I'll quickly answer my own question in case it helps anyone else. There was a bug and it's fixed by 'sudo rpi-update', with the caveats, for a firmware update. I had a camera in a binocular eyepiece and definitely needed the LED off.

See viewtopic.php?p=922799#p922799

[RaspberryPieman2016]

Hi Knightlorish,
I am using "2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie.img" on a Raspberry Pi Zero with camera port.
The LED is always on. I edited the /boot/config.txt file and added: disable_camera_led=1 via sudo nano
and sudo reboot.
It failed to boot-up after that. I am busy re-imaging the SD card.
Whilst doing that I found your post.

Q1. Do you mean that "there was a bug and it's fixed by 'sudo rpi-update'" - that it was fixed after my 2016-05-27 image?
Q2. If fixed do I still have to disable it by adding "disable_camera_led=1" to /boot/config.txt ?

Regards,
RaspberryPieman2016