This topic covers questions and feedback related to installing, running, and building NEPI Docker container images.
Learning about NEPI. I installed nepi lite, but I don’t see the image viewer app. I have the generic camera driver running. Does lite support image viewer?
Thanks!
NEPI Lite does support the Image Viewer app, it just needs to be enabled.
Check whether your camera is being detected, click Devices at the top and see if Imaging appears in the selector. If it does, your camera is connected.
To enable the Image Viewer app, go to System → Apps Manager, find Image Viewer in the list, and toggle it on. It will then appear under Data.
If Imaging doesn’t show up at all, could you let us know which camera model you’re using?
Thank you for your reply! Image viewer is enabled in Apps Manager and it does appear under Data (but no images). However, Imaging does not appear in the selector under Devices - it just says Waiting for Apps. I ran “docker exec -it v4l2-ctl --list-devices” and it shows up as “Microsoft LifeCam Cinema” and it lists /dev/video0, /dev/video1 and /dev/media0. This is a usb camera. It also shows the built-in laptop camera (/dev/video2-5).
I tried with another machine too - it does not have a built in camera, so just the single USB camera I plugged in. The camera works. Same result as before. Under Devices, it just says “Waiting for Apps”.
what system are you using, Could you try doing a nepipull on the repo and rebuild to the latest nepi version. We will make a script in the meantime for you to run which can diagnose the problem.
Thank you for your response. Some progress from my end. I read somewhere that you need an older version of Ubuntu, so I tried 20.04.6 LTS. I can now see the imaging app, the camera is recognized and the camera active LED on it is on. However, I don’t see an image.
Thanks for the updates. The progress on Ubuntu 20.04.6 is great, not sure what would be causing the video feed to be blank.
I’m building out some additional debug logging to pinpoint exactly where the image is getting lost, whether the camera isn’t delivering frames, or the frames are coming in but failing to decode (a common pixel-format/MJPG issue with USB webcams). I expect to have that ready by the end of the day today. Once it’s in, I’ll walk you through enabling it and grabbing the relevant log output so we can see the failure directly.
If that still doesn’t get us to the bottom of it, we’ll look into purchasing one of these cameras here so we can reproduce and debug it on our end. To make sure we order the exact same unit, could you confirm the make and model of your camera?
It’s the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema. Fairly old and I think they are not made any more, so it might not be worth your while getting one. This one: Microsoft LifeCam Cinema H5D-00013 B&H Photo Video. I’m happy to help debug if you don’t want to go through the trouble of getting one. In the meantime, I will look to see if I have another camera I can try.
I’m uploading a new Image now and expect it to be ready by tomorrow morning.
Once it’s available, could you run through these steps:
- Install the new image and boot the device.
- In the RUI, go to System → Device Manager and click Enable Admin Mode (the default password is
nepiadmin). - With Admin Mode on, turn on Debug Mode. This part matters: the new diagnostic lines are only written to the log when Debug Mode is enabled.
- Make sure the camera driver is enabled. If it isn’t already on, turn it on.
- Wait about a minute so the camera has time to try streaming and the logs fill in.
Then paste the contents of these two log files here:
- Discovery log:
/mnt/nepi_storage/logs/ros_log/nepi_device1_idx_v4l2_discovery.log - Camera node log: in that same
/mnt/nepi_storage/logs/ros_log/folder there’s a file named after your camera (it will have “microsoft” in the name). This one shows whether frames are actually arriving and decoding, so it’s the most useful for the blank-image issue.
I have the logs - they are fairly large - is there anything specific you want me to paste or can they be uploaded somewhere else (upload does not let me do it)?
I’m wondering if the issue is related to the following in the nepi_device1_microsoft®_14010.log. The values of settings_topic and save_data_topic do not seem to have the correct string representation for the registered trademark symbol. Seem to have the extended ascii code 0xAE.
[rosout][INFO] 2026-07-03 16:37:32,137: microsoft®_14010: IDXDeviceIF: ColorImageIF: color_image: Connected
[rosout][WARNING] 2026-07-03 16:37:32,141: microsoft®_14010: Starting data capture thread for data product: color_image
[rosout][INFO] 2026-07-03 16:37:32,965: e[32mmicrosoft®_14010: Created status msg: device_name: “microsoft\xAE_14010”
device_path: “/dev/video0”
device_node_name: “microsoft\xAE_14010”
serial_num: ‘’
hw_version: ‘’
sw_version: ‘’
data_source_description: ‘’
data_ref_description: ‘’
settings_topic: “/nepi/device1/microsoft\xAE_14010/idx/settings”
navpose_topic: ‘’
save_data_topic: “/nepi/device1/microsoft\xAE_14010/save_data”
data_products:
I did some searching about issues with this camera on ubuntu and found this:
The LifeCam Cinema is notorious for requesting maximum USB bandwidth even when not needed, which causes it to lock up. Tell the system to estimate the required bandwidth instead: Open the driver configuration file in the terminal using Nano:
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/uvcvideo.conf
Use code with caution.Paste the following line at the bottom of the file:
options uvcvideo quirks=0x80
Use code with caution.Save the file by pressing Ctrl + O, then Enter. Exit the editor with Ctrl + X.
Restart the kernel module by running:
sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo && sudo modprobe uvcvideo
Do you have any non-microsoft webcams that you can try? We recommend this low-cost option:
NEXIGO 1080p webcam
could you email the files to support@numurus.com with your discourse name in the subject
