A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners to Install and Set Up libcamera on Raspberry Pi

Updated August 9, 2023

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This tutorial will walk you through the process of installing and setting up the libcamera library on your Raspberry Pi device. Libcamera is an open source camera stack that provides developers with a range of features for interfacing with various cameras on different platforms, including the Raspberry Pi. By following this guide, you’ll be able to utilize libcamera for capturing images and video streams on your Raspberry Pi.

Introduction

libcamera is an open-source camera stack that provides developers with a range of features for interfacing with various cameras on different platforms, including the Raspberry Pi. It offers support for multiple camera interfaces, image processing algorithms, and allows users to create custom camera configurations. By installing libcamera on your Raspberry Pi device, you can take advantage of its powerful functionality for computer vision applications, machine learning projects, or any other use case where camera input is required.

Prerequisites

Before starting the installation process, ensure that you have the following:

A Raspberry Pi device (preferably model 3B+ or higher) with a recent version of Raspbian installed. You can download Raspbian from here.
A compatible camera module for your Raspberry Pi, such as the official Pi Camera Module v2, or any USB webcam.
Basic knowledge of Linux command line and Python programming.

Step 1: Update Your System

The first step is to ensure that your system is up-to-date by running the following commands in a terminal window:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

This will download the latest package lists and install any available updates for your Raspberry Pi.

Step 2: Install the Required Dependencies

libcamera depends on several libraries and tools, which need to be installed before it can run properly. Run the following command to install them:

sudo apt install -y cmake libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev libpng-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libv4l-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly python3-setuptools python3-pip

This command installs the necessary packages for building libcamera and its dependencies, as well as Python tools required to run it.

Step 3: Clone the libcamera Repository

Next, clone the libcamera repository from GitHub using the following command:

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/libcamera.git

This will download the latest version of the library to your Raspberry Pi device.

Step 4: Build and Install libcamera

Navigate to the cloned repository directory and create a build folder:

cd libcamera
mkdir build
cd build

Now, run the following commands to configure, build, and install libcamera:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
make -j4
sudo make install

The make -j4 command uses four threads for parallel compilation. You can adjust this number based on your system’s available CPU cores to speed up the process. Once the installation is complete, you should have libcamera installed on your Raspberry Pi.

Step 5: Test Your Installation

To verify that libcamera has been installed correctly, run the following command:

libcamera-hello

This will launch a basic camera preview application using the default camera settings. If everything is working properly, you should see a window displaying your camera feed. Press q to exit the application.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed libcamera on your Raspberry Pi device. This library provides a powerful set of tools for working with cameras and can be used in a variety of applications, from basic image capture to complex computer vision tasks. To learn more about the features and capabilities of libcamera, consult the official documentation.