Camera stops working after about an hour of working

Python
1

After about an hour of running, my camera starts to timeout grabbing a frame and returns a None object.

Mar 24 18:51:11 ubuntu env[2570]: [ WARN:0] global /tmp/pip-req-build-frgo6bcn/opencv/modules/videoio/src/cap_v4l.cpp (1001) tryIoctl VIDEOIO(V4L2:/dev/video0): select() timeout.
Mar 24 18:51:12 ubuntu env[2570]: [ WARN:0] global /tmp/pip-req-build-frgo6bcn/opencv/modules/videoio/src/cap_v4l.cpp (890) open VIDEOIO(V4L2:/dev/video1): can't open camera by index

When this happens I have code that closes the connection, runs usbreset on my USB camera and then attaches to it again. After a while, the camera fails to read at all, even after a usb reset

# Read from camera or reattach if broken
    _, frame = cam.read()
    if frame is None:
        for loop_counter in range(21):
            sleep(1.5)  # give camera time to turn on and try once more.
            _, frame = cam.read()
            if frame is not None:
                break
            if loop_counter == 7:
                cam.release()
                self.camera = None
                cam = None
                self.camera = self._set_up_camera(**self.img_size)
                cam = self.camera
                self.logger.warning("Camera has been dropped and re-attached")
            if loop_counter == 20:
                self.logger.error("Camera is really not working, enter panic")
                self.logger.critical("Haven't created a frame in {:.2f} seconds!".format(10*1.5))
                raise RuntimeError('Camera stopped capturing images')

I Loop through a few video optoins in case the USB camera does not attach to port 0 for some reason. I saw this happen once when I had to reset the device.

# Setup camera
  reset_usb_camera()  # Full usb reset
  dev_port = 0
  while True:
      camera = cv2.VideoCapture(dev_port, apiPreference=cv2.CAP_V4L2)
      if not camera.isOpened():
          print("Port %s is not working." % dev_port)
      else:
          sleep(1)  # give 'er a chance to start up
          camera.set(3, w)
          camera.set(4, h)
          camera.set(cv2.CAP_PROP_FOURCC, cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc("M", "J", "P", "G"))
          is_reading, img = camera.read()
          if is_reading:
              print("Port %s is working and reads images (%s x %s)" % (dev_port, h, w))
              break
          else:
              print("Port %s for camera (%s x %s) is present but does not read." % (dev_port, h, w))
              camera.release()

I am running this on a Raspberry PI with this camera from amazon.

I tried running a loop with just v4l2-ctl, which I’m using as a backend in OpenCV, to see if it would run for a while but it ended up getting bogged down and stopped running after about 353 images.

#!/bin/bash -x

printf "starting test\n"
for i in {0..1000}
do
	time v4l2-ctl \
	 	--device /dev/video0 \
	 	--set-fmt-video=width=1280,height=720,pixelformat=MJPG \
	 	--stream-mmap \
	 	--stream-to=frame${i}.jpg \
	 	--stream-count=1
	
	sleep 3s
done

For example, one time output was

real	3m53.618s
user	0m0.006s
sys	    0m0.036s

Showing that the system was getting blocked by something else. I thought it was I/O bound but when I ran iotop it said it wasn’t writing at all or just a few bytes. Also, I checked my CPU thermals to see if the whole system was overheating but it was at 51c so the CPU was fine. I didn’t know how to get the temps of the camera. When I reboot the whole system it normally comes back but not always, which is frustrating. Any ideas would be helpful and appreciated.

2

since you can replicate those issues with plain v4l tools, I’m inclined to conclude that OpenCV can’t do anything about this.

can you replicate this with a camera from an entirely different manufacturer?