Raspberry Pi Camera Training
Mike Davis – Truman College
1/13/2015
Goals for Today
• Plug in and access your Raspberry Pi
• Connect the camera and see that it works
• Determine the IP address of the Raspberry Pi
• Write a command that will tell the Raspberry Pi to take pictures with
the camera repeatedly.
• Get the pictures off the Raspberry Pi on to another computer.
• String the pictures into a time lapse movie.
The End Product
First things first – Plug in the Raspberry Pi
• Connect
•
•
•
•
•
Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Camera
Power (in that order)
Place for camera.
Helpful Video for Plugging in the Camera
• Lift up the small black guide by
the Ethernet port.
• The small electrical contacts on
the ribbon face the end with the
power cord.
• Avoid any kind of static or
sparks.
• Plug in, turn on the Rasberry Pi
after it is connected.
Configure the Camera
• You may need to configure the
camera.
sudo raspi-config
Select Enable Camera and then Finish.
• You will be asked to reboot. Go
ahead.
• This only needs to be done once.
• Camera Specs
• 5 M Pixel
• Video Mode – 1080p30, 720p60, and
640x480p60/90
• Full Frame SLR Lens Eq. – 35mm
• Fixed Focus – 1m to infinity
• F-Stop – 2.9
• Focal length – 3.60mm
• Can do up to 90 frames/second
Full Specs
Lets take a selfie.
• From the command line use this
script
raspistill –o picture.jpg
• This tells the computer to use a
program called raspistill and output
(o) a file called picture.jpg
• With the default settings this will
be a 2.4MB file.
Raspistill has a lot of customizable commands
Effect
Command
Default
Preview
-p
TRUE
No Preview
-n
FALSE
Sharpness
-sh
0
Contrast
-co
0
Brightness
-br
0
Horizontal Flip
-hf
FALSE
Vertical Flip
-vf
FALSE
Shutter Speed
-ss
N/A
Up to 6s
Complete list
Sample commands
• Flips the image
• raspistill –vf-hf –o picture.jpg
• Increase the contrast
• raspistill –co 50 –o picture.jpg
File management – Prepare to take pictures
• You may want to set up a folder to store the pictures you are taking.
Command
Effect
Example
pwd
Present working directory, where
you currently are.
mkdir
Make a new folder
mkdir camera
cd
Change directory
cd camera
cd ..
Return to previous directory
cd ..
cd /home/pi/camera
Go to a specific directory
cd /home/pi/camera
ls
List contents
ls
• If the goal is to take a picture and put it in file, that goes in to the
command.
raspistill –o /home/pi/camera/picture.jpg
How to do time lapse photos
1. Make sure you have a folder you want to save everything to.
2. Type the command
raspistill –o /home/pi/camera/picture%03.jpg –tl 10000 –t 120000
Program
Output
destination and
file name.
3 digit
number to
appear after
camera (001,
002, 003, etc)
Time lapse in
milliseconds
between
pictures
Total time in
milliseconds
for all pictures
Things to think about with time lapse projects
• What is something that will change slowly but dramatically?
•
•
•
•
Seedlings
Crystals
Bacterial growth
Decay
• How often will you need to take pictures?
• How much space will you need for those pictures?
• What can I control?
• Lights
• Power
Now lets get those pictures
On your Raspberry Pi
On your preferred computer
• Determine the IP address
sudo ifconfig
• Make sure you are on the same
network as the Raspberry Pi.
• Download WinSCP
• This is a program that will enable
File Transfer Protocol between
your computer and the Pi.
• Very user friendly interface.
Local computer on the left, remote computer
(RPi) on the right.
Got a lot of photos, how do I make a time
lapse movie?
Download Cineform – GoPro Studio
Light, free video editing
• Import all photos.
• Since they are ordered
sequentially, they will be in time
order.
• Go on to step 2, and step 3.
• Export as a AVI or MP4 or…
• Enjoy your movie!
Get clever
Use other things as lenses
Dye them
Lots of ways to skin a cat.
Can I use Dropbox?
Can I use a Python program
• You can, and its pretty easy.
• You can, and build it to your
needs.
• Instructions
• Requirements
• Dropbox account
• Developer access
• Benefits
• You can automatically upload files to
Dropbox.
• You can have a Python program take
pictures and send them to Dropbox.
• Check on your photos from
anywhere.
• Instructions
• Requirements
• A little programming experience,
but not much.
• Benefits
• You can tell your computer to take
pictures in the way you want,
when you want.
Potential Projects / Asks
• Make a Photobooth that will take a picture when a button is pushed, and
email it to the user.
• Example
• Take a picture of something at the same time everyday.
• Start taking time lapse photos at the same time everyday and upload them
to Dropbox or a remote server at the end of the day.
• Take video with the Raspberry Pi Camera
• Example
• Control the Raspberry Pi Camera from another computer.
• Example
• Control the Raspberry Pi Camera from your phone.
• Example