Text Overlay Flicker With Hugging Face

It does sound like a camera frame redraw / processing refresh conflict between the Camera Device, Hugging Face, and Text Overlay skills.

What’s likely happening

The Hugging Face skill is probably reprocessing the camera image and causing the camera control to refresh the image buffer. If the Text Overlay is attached to the wrong camera instance, or it’s drawing on a layer that gets replaced during each HF cycle, the overlay can appear to flicker or disappear.

1) Use the exact camera name in ControlCommand

If the Text Overlay skill supports being attached by camera name, use the exact Camera Device skill title:

controlCommand("Text Overlay", "AttachToCamera", "Camera Device (Front USB)");

If you have renamed the skill, the name must match exactly.

Startup tip

Because you mentioned it sometimes binds to the wrong camera unless you run it at startup, put the attach command in a script that runs when the project loads, or in the initialization script of a startup control.

A small delay can help ensure the camera exists first:

sleep(1000);
controlCommand("Text Overlay", "AttachToCamera", "Camera Device (Front USB)");

2) Make sure Hugging Face is using that same camera

Open the Hugging Face robot skill settings from its kebab menu and verify the camera source is explicitly set to:

• Camera Device (Front USB)

If HF is pointed at a different camera feed, the overlay may be attaching to one feed while HF is processing another.

3) Check the Text Overlay configuration

Open the Text Overlay skill’s kebab menu and verify:

• It is attached to Camera Device (Front USB)
• It is not set to a different camera or "any available" source
• The overlay is configured to persist on the active camera device, not a separate preview window

4) Try reducing HF refresh rate

If HF is running continuously, try increasing its interval so it doesn’t redraw as often.

In the Hugging Face skill configuration:

• increase the continuous interval
• or test with Query Once instead of continuous start

If the flicker disappears with slower HF updates, that confirms the redraw timing is the trigger.

5) Best workaround: let HF update variables, and Text Overlay read the variable

If the overlay text is tied directly to a variable that changes frequently, the overlay can look unstable if the source value is being rewritten rapidly.

A more reliable pattern is:

1. HF updates its variable
2. a script copies the value into a stable display variable
3. Text Overlay displays that stable variable

Example JavaScript:

var label = getVar("$HfLabel", "");
setVar("$DisplayLabel", label);

Then point Text Overlay at $DisplayLabel instead of reading HF’s variable directly.

6) If the overlay is still wiped, use a single camera processing chain

On smaller systems like the Atomic Pi, performance and repaint timing can matter a lot. A good test is:

• only one Camera Device
• only one Hugging Face
• only one Text Overlay
• no extra scripts

If stable then, add the other pieces back one at a time.

My recommendation

Try this order:

1. Confirm HF and Text Overlay both use Camera Device (Front USB)
2. Run attach at startup:

   sleep(1000);
   controlCommand("Text Overlay", "AttachToCamera", "Camera Device (Front USB)");
   

3. Increase HF continuous interval
4. If needed, use a stable intermediate variable like $DisplayLabel

A couple of questions

1. In the Text Overlay skill, are you displaying $HfLabel directly, or a custom variable?
2. Is Hugging Face running in continuous Start mode, or only Query Once?
3. What exact camera source shows in the Hugging Face skill configuration?

If you want, I can help you set up a more robust ARC script so the HF result is mirrored into a separate display variable that stays stable even while the camera is being updated.