Skip to main content

USB Camera

The WalnutPi system has built-in USB camera drivers. Most USB cameras on the market are supported. The following model is used in this guide:

usb_cam1

Simply plug it into one of the WalnutPi's USB ports.

usb_cam2

Getting Device Information​

First, use v4l2-ctl to view the current USB camera device information. You need to install v4l. Most WalnutPi software can be installed via sudo apt install:

sudo apt install v4l-utils

After installation, run the following command to view the inserted USB camera information:

v4l2-ctl --list-devices

You can see that this camera has multiple video devices, usually the first one. Here it is: video1

usb_cam3

Testing with mjpg-streamer​

Download the Project​

Project URL: https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer

Here we use git to download, making future updates easier.

git clone https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer.git

usb_cam4

Note

If you don't have access to GitHub, you can open the project URL in a browser, click Code -- Download Zip to download the project files, then copy them to the WalnutPi.

usb_cam5

Also install the required dependencies:

sudo apt install -y cmake libjpeg62-turbo-dev

Compile and Install​

Next, execute the following commands to compile and install mjpg-streamer:

cd mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental
make -j4
sudo make install

Start Testing​

After installation, enter the following command to start mjpg_streamer. Note that we use video1 here; adjust according to your actual device number.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.
sudo ./mjpg_streamer -i "./input_uvc.so -d /dev/video1 -u -f 30" -o "./output_http.so -w ./www"

After a successful start, the output looks like the following. Some error messages can be ignored: usb_cam6

On a computer on the same LAN (usually under the same router), open a browser and enter the WalnutPi's IP address and port 8080, e.g., 192.168.2.134:8080. Open the webpage and you will see the mjpg_streamer homepage. You can also do this directly in the browser on the WalnutPi's desktop system.

usb_cam7

Click Stream to see the real-time video stream captured by the camera.

usb_cam8