You are correct, it should not be required to get so technically involved to get pidog working. Unfortunately, in your case, something seems to have gone wrong, either in the hardware build or software installation.
So, we now need to establish what is wrong, which is more involved.
Your initial out of range index error suggests a hardware problem, my best guess is that the camera cable isn’t installed properly, or maybe i2c devices and the main program is simply exiting before it gets to the point to connect your controller. If you post your FULL commands output that will be easier to see what’s going on.
Assuming it is the camera then, If you are using a newer raspbian OS, then rpicam-hello is one method to verify camera operation. Neither rpicam-hello nor libcamera-hello, will fix your problem, they will just give more information as to the source of the problem.
You said that the rpicam-hello command was not found, however the command you showed was incorrectly spelled.
It’s rpicam-hello (with an i)
Not
rpcam–hello
Please run this, or libcamera-hello and post the full output here.
If neither command can be found then we need to know your actual OS, as one of them should definitely be available, under all raspbian builds, so something else is amiss. Run this command and post the full output to establish your OS
cat /etc/os-release
Thanks for reporting that the servos run ok, thats a step in the right direction. I also suggested running the sunfounder basic example programs. Some use i2c, so that would let us check i2c connections too.
Whilst typing this I noticed that sunfounder gave some alternative possible fixes. I’d suggest trying their suggestions first before getting deeper technically involved, which may be unnecessary.
