[devicenull]

So the code doesn't try to initalize the camera over and over.

That variable gets reset when you power cycle the robot controller anyway.

One thing I have noticed, is that if the serial wire is loose, the camera acts very, very funny (Not picking up the reset commnads from the RC, for one).. If you are having that many problems, why not modify the code so it sends a couple of \n's to the camera before it tries to initalize it? It may be the camera has part of a command stuck in its buffer for some reason.