Troubleshooting#
Common issues during a first build.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No preview on the monitor | No HDMI signal, or the browser UI never started | Plug in an HDMI monitor, or join the CinePi Wi-Fi and open cinepi.local:5000. The browser UI only starts if the Pi has a network address at boot — if you connect later, restart Cinemate. See Web GUI. |
| Camera not detected | Ribbon connected with power on, or wrong sensor overlay | Power off, reseat the ribbon, power on. Confirm the right sensor line is enabled in config.txt. |
| Recording won't start / no storage | Drive not labelled or formatted as expected | The drive must be formatted exFAT, ext4 or NTFS and labelled RAW, and mounted. See Quick start. |
| Purple/magenta screen, frequent DROP | Storage too slow for the current frame rate | Lower the FPS or use faster media (SSD, NVMe, or CFE Hat). See Camera sensors and frame rates. |
| Blue screen at startup or on inserting a drive | Normal storage pre-roll (warm-up) | This is expected, not an error. To disable it, set "auto_storage_preroll": false. See Storage pre-roll warm-up. |
| Audio drifts out of sync on long takes | Microphone clock drift | See Audio sync & drift for correction. |
| Can't reach the Pi over SSH | Hostname or network | Connect to cinepi.local. See Connecting via SSH. |
Power down before changing hardware
Always power the Pi off before attaching or removing the camera ribbon or a hat. Hot-swapping can damage hardware.