Skip to main content

USB Camera

The Walnut Pi system has built-in USB camera drivers. Most USB cameras on the market are supported. This tutorial uses the following model as an example:

usb_cam1

Simply plug it into any USB port on the Walnut Pi.

usb_cam2

Getting Device Information​

First, use v4l2-ctl to view the current USB camera device information. Install v4l—most Walnut Pi software can be installed via sudo apt install:

sudo apt install v4l-utils

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

v4l2-ctl --list-devices

You can see that this camera has multiple video devices, with the first one usually being the correct one. Here it's: video1

usb_cam3

Testing with mjpg-streamer​

Download the Project​

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

We'll use git to clone it for easy updates later.

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, and then copy them to the Walnut Pi.

usb_cam5

You'll also need to install the dependency packages:

sudo apt install -y cmake libjpeg62-turbo-dev

Build and Install​

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

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

Start and Test​

After installation, run the following command to start mjpg_streamer. Note that we use video1 here—replace it with 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"

Upon successful startup, you'll see the output below (some error messages can be safely ignored): usb_cam6

Open a web browser on a computer on the same LAN (typically connected to the same router) and enter the Walnut Pi's IP address with port 8080, e.g.: 192.168.2.134:8080. The mjpg_streamer homepage will appear. You can also do this directly in the Walnut Pi's Desktop edition browser.

usb_cam7

Click Stream to view the real-time video feed from the camera.

usb_cam8