Is there a terminal command or other way to compltely turn off a Raspberry Pi camera?

Question

I have a Raspberry Pi camera and use my Raspberry Pi a lot, but the camera has a tendency to overheat. Is there a terminal command to turn off the camera and to turn it back on when I need it?

It is not controlled via USB, but the CSI camera connector.

Answer 1

The RPI does not have a PCI bus, so we cannot use the standard Linux command to turn off the onboard camera. Just for the sake of completeness, I will show you how to do both things, in a RPI an in a normal pc.

RPI

The RPI camera can be turned off at boot. There's a file, /boot/config.txt, where you will need this setting:

start_x=0             

while setting start_x=1 turns it on.

If you want to do this on the run, you may try (I do not have one to try this on) the following at a pyhton prompt:

 import picamera
 from time import sleep
 sleep(500)

and see whether this actually solves your overheating problem. Of course, you will need to have installed

  sudo apt-get install python-picamera

Pc with PCI bus

The command is

 echo 0 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.3/bConfigurationValue

to turn it off, and of course echo 1 > ... to turn it on again. The only problem is that the bus address 1-1.3 is correct for my pc. You find your address by looking at the output of

 # lsusb -t 
  ...............
  :  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/3p, 480M                                                                                                                                                                                                             
     |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/6p, 480M                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
     |__ Port 2: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M                                                                                                                                                                                                             
     |__ Port 2: Dev 4, If 1, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M                                                                                                                                                                                                             
     |__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M                                                                                                                                                                                                            
     |__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M  

You see in this output a Class=Video object, located at Bus 1, dev 3. Now you can go to

 # cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/; ls 
 1-0:1.0  1-1.2      1-1.3      2-0:1.0  2-1.5      2-1.6:1.0   2-1.6:1.2  2-1.6:1.5  2-1.6:1.8  3-2      3-3:1.0  4-0:1.0  usb3

The only 1-3 device is 1-1.3. You enter the directory and double check that this is your video cam by

# cat id{Vendor,Product}
   1bcf
   288e

which you can compare with the output of

 # lsusb 
  ................
  Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1bcf:288e Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc. 

A Google search shows that 1bcf is indeed a VideoCam. 1-1.3 is the code to insert in the command above.