Problem with camera Red Vision Kit for XRP

Robotics
1

I have a SparkFun Red Vision Kit for my XRP robot. Even though I have checked all the physical connections several times, I cannot get the camera to work.

I think the product has a hardware defect.

Technical details:

Controller: My XRP board is the new version with RP2350 (USB-C). Camera board - HM01B0.

Firmware: I flashed the latest general firmware: RED_VISION_MICROPYTHON_XRP_CONTROLLER-RED_VISION (v1.27.0-dirty December 20, 2025).

Problem: the camera does not initialize and the camera LED does not turn on (no power) — photo attached.

I have added the error logs during initialization of your suggested code in the photo below. I2C scanning shows the general board addresses ([21, 32]), but cannot establish communication with the camera sensor.

Since the LED does not turn on and I immediately get I/O errors, I decided to write to you. Please provide recommendations for troubleshooting or replacing the module.

screenshot_of_the_error
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2

Try re-pasting the photo(s), it won’t let people add them on their first post

It also might help to share a photo of the wiring/soldering

3

Here is a photo of the problem

photo_camera_LED
photo_camera_LED1280Ă—719 108 KB

4

Hi there, sorry to hear you’re having trouble!

As you noted, the power LED is not illuminating, so the problem is most likely lack of power to the camera. Do you have a multimeter? If so, can you please measure the voltage of a few things while the board is powered:

  1. The 3V3 pin
  2. The RST pin
  3. The PD pin
  4. The top pad of the resistor in the top right corner of the front of the board
  5. There’s a test point on the back of the board labeled “2V8”

Here are the locations for each point:

image
image594Ă—920 82.7 KB
image
image594Ă—920 62.5 KB

These are signals that control power to the board, so knowing the voltage on each might give an indication of what the problem is.

2 Likes
5

Hello, thank you for your reply.

I measured the voltage with a multimeter and got the following results:

  1. The 3V3 pin – 3.27
  2. The RST pin – 0
  3. The PD pin --0.52
  4. The top pad of the resistor in the top right corner of the front of the board – 0.52
  5. There’s a test point on the back of the board labeled “2V8” – 0

I will wait for further instructions.

6

Thank you!

I believe this MOSFET on your board is bad:

image
image216Ă—355 10.1 KB

This is something we’ve observed rarely, where one of the 2 MOSFETs allows leakage from its drain pin to its source and gate pins. It’s something we check for in production, so I’m not sure how this got through to storefront. Sorry about that!

You have a couple options:

  1. If you’re comfortable modifying the board, you can remove the bad MOSFET with a soldering iron or hot air rework. If you don’t have soldering tools, you could also snip off the legs of the MOSFET with some side cutters.
    • There’s no need to replace the MOSFET, all it does is disable power to the rest of the board. It’s incorrectly doing this on your board because it’s defective, but power should be enabled by default, so removing the MOSFET should fix the problem.
  2. You can RMA the board to get a replacement. If you’d like to do this, please work with @TS-Russell. We will need your order number in order to process the RMA.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
7

Was it purchased from us? If so head over to Return Policy - SparkFun Electronics (contact vendor if purchased elsewhere) and we’ll get ya squared away