How to install / use the Raspberry Pi Camera

Hardware Setup

Connect the cable as seen below:

Software Setup

It might be necessary to do some updates:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Enable camera

Enable camera interface from the configuration:

sudo raspi-config

Select 5 Interfacing Options and P1 Camera and enable it. Then you can close the screen and reboot PI.

Command-line interface

Taking a photo

Capture an image in jpeg format with default settings:

raspistill -o image.jpg

Recording a video

Capturing a 10 second video (10000 milliseconds).

raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

Capture 30 seconds of raw video at 640x480 and 150kB/s bit rate into a video.h264 file:

raspivid -t 30000 -w 640 -h 480 -fps 25 -b 1200000 -p 0,0,640,480 -o video.h264

The Pi captures video as a raw H264 video stream. Many media players will refuse to play it, or play it at an incorrect speed, unless it is “wrapped” in a suitable container format like MP4. The easiest way to obtain an MP4 file from the raspivid command is using MP4Box.

Install MP4Box with this command:

sudo apt-get install -y gpac

Capture your raw video with raspivid and wrap it in an MP4 container like this:

# Capture 30 seconds of raw video at 640x480 and 150kB/s bit rate into a pivideo.h264 file:
raspivid -t 30000 -w 640 -h 480 -fps 25 -b 1200000 -p 0,0,640,480 -o pivideo.h264
# Wrap the raw video with an MP4 container:
MP4Box -add pivideo.h264 pivideo.mp4
# Remove the source raw file, leaving the remaining pivideo.mp4 file to play
rm pivideo.h264

To play the video you can use omxplayer:

omxplayer video.mp4

Useful links:

• How to install Raspberry PI camera
• Raspivid Usage

Python (picamera)

Install picamera:

• Python 2:

  sudo apt-get install python-picamera
  

• Python 3:

  sudo apt-get install python3-picamera
  

  Examples

Take a picture:

import picamera

camera = picamera.PiCamera()
camera.capture('image1.jpg')

Stop motion

import picamera
from time import sleep

camera = picamera.PiCamera()

camera.capture('image1.jpg')
sleep(5)
camera.capture('image2.jpg')

Video recording:

import picamera
from time import sleep

camera.start_recording('video.h264')
sleep(5)
camera.stop_recording()

Camera Settings:

camera.sharpness = 0
camera.contrast = 0
camera.brightness = 50
camera.saturation = 0
camera.ISO = 0
camera.video_stabilization = False
camera.exposure_compensation = 0
camera.exposure_mode = 'auto'
camera.meter_mode = 'average'
camera.awb_mode = 'auto'
camera.image_effect = 'none'
camera.color_effects = None
camera.rotation = 0
camera.hflip = False
camera.vflip = False
camera.crop = (0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0)

Preview:

You can display a preview showing the camera feed on screen. Warning: this will overlay your Python session by default; if you have trouble stopping the preview, simply pressing Ctrl+D to terminate the Python session is usually enough to restore the display:

camera.start_preview()

You can use the stop_preview method to remove the preview overlay and restore the display:

camera.stop_preview()

Useful links:

• Raspberry PI Camera Usage
• picamera Useful Recipes