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Camera board available for sale!

The camera boards are now available for order! You can buy one from RS Components or from Premier Farnell/Element14. We’ve been very grateful for your patience as we’ve tweaked and refined things; it’d have been good to get the camera board out to you last month, but we wanted your experience to be as good as possible, and we’ve been working on the software right up until last night. Thank you to Gordon and Rob at Raspberry Pi and to Dom Cobley for their work on the firmware (Rob also worked on the documentation); to JamesH for his work on the software; to the Broadcom Cambridge ISP team, particularly David Plowman and Naush Patuck, for volunteering to help with tuning; to Bruce Gentles at Broadcom for his volunteering to help with some of the initial bring-up; to James Adams at Raspberry Pi for running the hardware project, and everybody at Sony Pencoed for making it happen.

Tehzeeb Gunza at OmniVision coordinated things from their end, and helped us with sensor selection. Thanks also to Gert van Loo and Rob Gwynne for their work on the hardware design. (And thank you to Broadcom for letting us take advantage of your team’s willingness to volunteer for us!) This, for the curious, is the camera lab we’ve been borrowing from Broadcom for testing. The mannequin’s name is Veronica. She’s lousy company. The room gives us a calibrated and fixed target to use during tuning; it’s designed to be filled with examples of the sorts of things people tend to take pictures of. Which makes it a kind of creepy place to hang out. Between this and anechoic chambers, we’re getting the full range of testing chambers that give us the shivers.

Click to enlarge. You might be interested to learn that this was snapped with a Nokia N8, which uses an earlier version of the imaging core that’s in the Raspberry Pi (but a different sensor and optics).

For such a small device, this has been an enormous project, and a year-long effort for everybody involved. We’re pretty proud of it: we hope you like it!

How to set up the camera hardware

Please note that the camera can be damaged by static electricity. Before removing the camera from its grey anti-static bag, please make sure you have discharged yourself by touching an earthed object (e.g. a radiator or water tap).

The flex cable inserts into the connector situated between the Ethernet and HDMI ports, with the silver connectors facing the HDMI port. The flex cable connector should be opened by pulling the tabs on the top of the connector upwards then towards the Ethernet port. The flex cable should be inserted firmly into the connector, with care taken not to bend the flex at too acute an angle. The top part of the connector should then be pushed towards the HDMI connector and down, while the flex cable is held in place. (Please view the video above to watch the cable being inserted.)

The camera may come with a small piece of translucent blue plastic film covering the lens. This is only present to protect the lens while it is being mailed to you, and needs to be removed by gently peeling it off.

How to enable camera support in Raspbian

Boot up the Pi and log in. The default username is pi, and the default password is raspberry. (Note: if you have changed these from the default then you will need to supply your own user/password details).

Run the following commands in a terminal to upgrade the Raspberry Pi firmware to the latest version:

sudo apt-get update

Click to enlarge

sudo apt-get upgrade

Click to enlarge

Access the configuration settings for the Pi by running the following command:

sudo raspi-config

Navigate to “camera” and select “enable”.

Click to enlarge

Select “Finish” and reboot.

Click to enlarge

How to use the Raspberry Pi camera software

raspivid is a command line application that allows you to capture video with the camera module, while the application raspistill allows you to capture images.

-o or –output specifies the output filename and -t or –timeout specifies the amount of time that the preview will be displayed in milliseconds. Note that this set to 5s by default and that raspistill will capture the final frame of the preview period.

-d or –demo runs the demo mode that will cycle through the various image effects that are available.

Example commands

Capture an image in jpeg format:

raspistill -o image.jpg

Capture a 5s video in h264 format:

raspivid -o video.h264

Capture a 10s video:

raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

Capture a 10s video in demo mode:

raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000 -d

To see a list of possible options for running raspivid or raspistill, you can run:

raspivid | less

raspistill | less

Use the arrow keys to scroll and type q to exit.

Extended documentation is available.

Note that we recommend that you change SSH password if you are using a camera, in order to prevent unwanted access.

How to stream video from the Raspberry Pi camera over a network

To view the feed on Linux

Install the dependencies by running the following in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install mplayer netcat

Find your IP address by running ifconfig. (Your IP address will be listed in the console output and will probably be of the form 192.168.1.XXX).

Run the following command in a terminal to view the feed using MPlayer:

nc -l -p 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

To view the feed on Windows

~~Install and run Linux instead.~~

Find your IP address by running ipconfig. (Your IP address will be listed in the console output and will probably be of the form 192.168.1.XXX).

Download MPlayer.

Download Netcat.

Note that your browser may complain that these files are malicious, as they are unsigned executables.

Press the Windows key and the ‘r’ key simultaneously to bring up the “Run” dialog. Enter cmd.exe into the dialog and press enter/return to open a DOS prompt.

Enter the following command at the prompt to view the feed using MPlayer:

[Path to nc.exe]\nc.exe -L -p 5001 | [Path to mplayer.exe]\mplayer.exe -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

To view the feed on OS X

Download MPlayer.

Alternatively, you can download mplayer using Brew, which we recommend.

Find your IP address by running ifconfig. (Your IP address will be listed in the console output and will probably be of the form 192.168.1.XXX).

Run the following command in Terminal to view the feed using MPlayer:

nc -l -p 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

To view the feed on a Raspberry Pi:

Find your IP address by running ifconfig. (Your IP address will be listed in the console output and will probably be of the form 192.168.1.XXX).

Run the following commands in a terminal on the receiving Pi:

mkfifo buffer

nc -p 5001 -l > buffer | /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/hello_video.bin buffer

To transmit the feed from the Pi with camera module attached

After setting up the “receiving” machine as per the instructions above, run the following commands in a terminal on the “transmitting” Pi:

raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [insert the IP address of the client] 5001

You can then use the commands listed in the “How to use the Raspberry Pi camera software” section above to change the capture time or to add a video effect.

How to submit bug reports or see the source code

You can see the source code and submit bug reports for raspivid and raspicam here.

292 comments

It is already out of stock?!

Depends on where you are ordering from….I believe the original production batch was sent to various distributors around the world (could be wrong) so everyone gets a chance of purchasing.

5-14-13: Newark.com (Element 14 USA): Their website wouldn’t let me order, so I called (800) 463-9275 and ordered #69W0689 at $25.00+tax+ $8.48 for shipping. Shipped same day. The quantity limit is one. I guess I cold have called ALLIED and ordered another one, but I didn’t.

Yiupiii…

Excellent news. Fantastic. I’m looking forward to having a play.

Gotta love corporates though – RS say it’s “coming soon” and e14 say:
No price was found for product 2302279. Item was not added to basket.
…
Unit Price: £16.56

I’ll try later!

Found that CPC have them and have successfully ordered two. Excellent.

Thank you! Found on CPC and just ordered

Yeah, I got that too ;-/ An odd message cosindering the price is clearly displayed.

You can order it through CPC, I ordered mine the moment I woke up this morning :)

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/bespoke/bespoke7.jsp?bespokepage=cpc/en_CC/makerspace/picamera_lp.jsp&isRedirect=true

To order from Farnell (Element 14) you need to go to the consumer Raspberry Pi pages – as they are listed as out-of-stock in the business accounts.

You can go to
http://export.farnell.com/rp/order/

The European sites I believe are shipped from the UK and are showing as “in stock”, but no quantity.

The US site show 20 available.

My guess would be that not listing them on the business site is deliberate to allow Pi fans to get hold of one before businesses / resellers bulk order lots, but I don’t really know if that is the case or not.

Correction: The US site doesn’t show any – I was looking at the Pi which has 20 available.

So where do you get them in the US?

Fantastic!
Order confirmed!

Leo

Arrived and Working!! :-)

Leo

“…we re commend you change SSH password … to prevent unauthorised access”

Can you explain that in plain English please for those of us who don’t remember ever ordering or installing a SSH, whatever that is?

SSH is a mechanism to remotely access a machine. If you have the default password set on your Raspberry Pi, and SSH enabled, and your Pi is attached to the internet, then anyone could log in to it (as they know the password!), start the camera and stream the data back to themselves.

Note this would require port forwarding for SSH set on your home router to the Pi, unless your Pi is directly connected to the net.

But its still safer to change the password.

If your Rasbian setup has ssh enabled then until you change the password for the pi user, anyone who can connect to your Pi can take it over.

The default password is well known, so change it as follows:

login to the pi user.
Type the passwd command then follow the prompts to enter your old (current) password and then the new one, twice.

Use something secure, like two or three nonsense words together – leftleeks or frogknees or something stupid like that.

Best not to use 3 for e, 4 for a and so on, crackers already know that, so r45p83rry is not very secure!

Tag on a punctuation mark or two for added benefits.

HTH

Cheers,
Norm.

To change your user password (and thereby also your SSH password) enter “passwd” into a terminal and follow the instructions.

Morning all.

Regarding static precautions. I have noticed a trend in “modern” houses to have metal radiators with the main pipes being plastic. Sometimes it looks ok because there are copper pipes leading to and from the radiators, however, these may connect to plastic pipes somewhere out of sight.

My own house, for example, has copper feed pipes to all the radiators, but those are short and connect to plastic pipes under the floor! Not very good for earthing purposes I would imagine?

I also have a couple of taps with plastic pipes too. Just the last foot or so is copper.

I tend to use a metal plate connected to the mains earth by a 13A plug WHICH HAS HAD THE LIVE AND NEUTRAL PINS REMOVED leaving only the long earth pin connected. (I think I got it in Maplins.)

Health and safety warning – don’t mess with the mains, or 13A plugs unless you really do know what you are doing. It’s not good enough to think you know, you really do have to know. Trust me, I’ve been plugged in (not through my fault though) to the mains twice. It’s not fun and it’s not pleasant, assuming you manage to survive. I was lucky – twice. Third time? I do not intend to find out.

Sorry, I’ve gone off on one again! I’ll go now.

Cheers,
Norm.

If anyone is worndering, this:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/antistatic-bonding-plug-12712

Which needs the following to be useful:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/coiled-earth-cords-6893

HTH

Cheers,
Norm.

Do not worry at all about plastic pipe in a heating system – there will be a sufficient path to earth anyway. Water with anti-corrosion inhibitor dissolved in it will be a perfectly adequate conductor of electricity.
Also be aware that all commercial antistatic systems will have a resistor of at least one megohm built in to avoid a tingle when you discharge.

How about Video4Linux support? If it already is supported, maybe someone can post the v4l2-ctl --list-formats-out output?

No, it’s not yet supported.

James, are you working on that? Or at least planning?

Is it possible to combine the camera with any lense to achieve a wide angle (fish-eye) view? And at what performance and resolution is the stream available via network?

It’s a fixed lens but someone has already managed to remove it, so adding another lens may be possible.

Streaming will depend on your network capability. I’ve got it streaming at 1080p30 over a LAN. You could reduce the bitrate/fps if you run out of bandwidth.

Thanks for your reply. Did you stream a USB webcam or the new camera board? And what tool/command did you use for streaming? Last question: did you stream in H.264 or MJPEG?

Raspi camera board (webcam won’t go that fast). Used the example app raspivid which can write H264 to STDOUT and piped that to nc.

Thanks for the info. I’ll buy the camera board and play around with it. Curious if there are any other cameras out there that can be connected to the MIPI/CIS interface.

Well, each camera needs a specific driver (and a specific PCB to munge all the signals to the right place), but technically we have drivers for quite a few different sensors, but only one is included in the Raspi firmware.

The reason for all my questions is that I’m trying to use the RaspberryPi similar to and IP camera streaming HD-resolution as H.264 streams. And for the lense I need more than 100° viewing angle. Another option is a stand-alone OEM IP camera module (without RaspberryPi then).

You can add a wide-angle converter lens on top of the R-Pi camera to get a wider angle view. They sell these for mobile phone cameras.

Nice idea about the wide-angle converter. Can your provide a link to any example product? I used google but found only big lenses for professional digital cameras.

Sorry, I’m a bit of a newb but how did you pipe that to nc? I saw this command in the instructions “raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [insert the IP address of the client] 5001” but that is to send the feed straight to an ip that’s on your network, right?

Is it possible to get the video to go through a port that I can forward to the web and access remotely?

Check out the forums for answers to questions like this.

Ordered one from RS. Despatch expected within 3 week. Hopefully they’ll ship it sooner! :)

What is the product code for RS. In the site the camera is comming soon.

Ordered mine from Farnell (UK). Despatch w/c 27 May.

And got notification today, 15 May, that it’s been shipped.

And it arrived today (May 16). Nice one, Farnell.

Can’t be ordered outside of UK.
Don’t know why someone keeps deleting my posts…

Yes, it can be ordered outside the UK. Use the personal section of the distributors websites, not the trade section.

Managed to buy it with RS (which I’ve wanted to avoid), farnell’s store still says “No price was found”.

Why did you want to avoid RS?

I ordered mine on Monday afternoon, in the USA, and from Newark Element14. I have never experienced any issues with this vendor. Mine shipped Monday afternoon, in Jacksonville today, I expect arrival in Hollywood, FL tomorrow according to tracking number on my order confirmation.

Maybe RS in his country sells only to buisness and not to individuals so the customer support is bad. I had problems with contacting someone from RS in my country to resolve a billing issue. The sent me back and forth and finally I used credit card chargeback.
I.e. in Poland Farnell has real people answering phones and e-mails and they generally sell to individuals.

RS and Farnell are both back order but CPC is showing stock and doesn’t have a minimum order charge for credit card orders unlike Farnell and RS.

Amazing! I’m getting one for my quadrocopter project asap!

Already go one.

Check out video’s here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1VeV66ugk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBaYij_BNlg

RS just accepted my camera order!
Not a good idea to connect direct to earth pin of a mains plug because (unlikely but not impossible) wiring fault leaves you at risk of getting a shock!

Do need yourself, Pi and camera to be at same potential so suggest: Keep yourself in contact with metal shell of Pi’s USB, Ethernet or HDMI connector while opening camera anti-static bag. Keep in contact with bag as well while withdrawing camera and connecting to Pi then you can let go, power up and enjoy!

Hi Nigel,

if the “earth wire” comment was aimed in my direction, I 100% agree. :-)

This is what I use http://www.maplin.co.uk/antistatic-bonding-plug-12712 but I didn’t get it for that price!

Cheers,
Norm.

Hi Norm,

The Maplin product you suggest is a good idea – it has a 1M resistor which will limit current in a fault situation. I was just keen to discourage making direct connections to mains earth as a static potential can be discharged quite easily by other means.

Cheers!
Nigel

It’s also a bit expensive for a £.75 plug with most of the bits missing…

Hi James,

I like Maplins – they are local and very helpful – but, yes, I agree, they are a bit pricey!

Cheers,
Norm.

Touching a wire connected to the earth pin on a plug is no worse than touching a radiator or a metal socket front or the case of your desktop PC.

Where you need to be more careful is with things like wrist straps which make a connection to your body which may be difficult to disconnect in an emergency, those MUST have a high resistance in them to prevent them becoming part of a shock path.

ordered from farnnel as RS says ‘coming soon’
can’t wait for it to arrive. I’m thinking video doorbell, maybe. Ideas are flooding into my head

Can you control the camera through Python? For example, to grab a still for further processing.

You can use os.system() to run raspivid and raspistill from a Python script.

See http://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html

I used the following code:
import subprocess
cmdpimg = “raspistill -o image.jpg”
p = subprocess.Popen(cmdpimg, shell=True, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
to take a still within python as os.system has now been deprecated.
Worked a treat ;¬))

Please, what do you mean the OS.system has been deprecated?
I’m looking for a way of turning the camera on and off with keystrokes

I’ve ordered mine from CPC… Said it was in stock so hopefully will get this week. Also decided it was about time to get a 512MB Raspberry Pi, just in case the extra RAM proves useful.

That woman in the picture, is that some kind of raspberry pi project? If it is are you going to release the code?

Er, that’s Veronica…not a great conversationalist.

What I find personally disturbing about Veronica is that she’s wearing some clothes my wife provided. I’ve occasionally done a double-take on entering the lab….

Officially creeped out now…

Not as creepy as Chomerics Polasheet – that stuff *really* creeps me out (feels like cold male facial skin complete with stubble…. uuurrrgghh****)

Haha, someone just needs to wire up a PIR-triggered servo to the head when no-ones looking… *evil laugh*

Fantastic work…one hell of an effort and a job well done. Everyone involved deserves a pat on the back and a celebratory pint!

Ordered and awaiting delivery ! :)

This looks great, i’m scared of sparking it though, has anyone got any innovative ‘camera case’ ideas??

I’ve not taken any antistat precautions during development over the last few months (no case at all), and so far it’s all working, BUT that said, you really should take some precautions just in case.

A mini CCTV enclosure is what I’m thinking. Possibly with attached humanoid body a-la-Banksy artwork.

it fits in an SD card plastic case, if you cut a square in the top face and a slot in the side for the ribbon cable. it fits quite snugly and only the lense is exposed.

and thank you vry much raspberry pi peoples: i have had my camera for just over half a day and it is super! : )

Note that SD card cases vary considerably.

Is there any cable extension for the camera board? I need some extra length.

No, go much more than that supplied and the camera will stop working. Might get 30cm if you are lucky.

I’ve ordered a 20cm cable on farnell. It’s just 5cm longer, but it will simplify a long list of small problems I had to put together on my robot arm the pan/tilt support and the raspberry pi. I don’t expect to use the highest resolution though.

now LCD display that works with the on-board connector would be a good next step for you guys at the foundation . I’ve looked almost everywhere if i could find any LCD’s that work with the DSI connector found none and even if i did i’m sure it wouldn’t have worked.

Its always been on the plan to get a display sorted out at some point. The camera is done now, so that does leave some spare time…

Great news & well done by all!
Now you have ‘free time’, what’s the timescale for the foundation touchscreen?
(i know, i’m just impatient…)

Really James,

You’ve got spare time… You should have said, I’m fairly sure there are opportunities for you in the far east…

I’m sure, but I’ve still got no taste for Kimchee…

Hopefully we see it soon.congrats on the camera

I found this on ebay and it is supposed to work with the RPi:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/121004607232

He has some images and videos of it working on the RPi, but I havent tested it yet, I have been using it on a windows project.

Tried all morning to get one from Farnell. First they where out of stock for hours on end. Then there where ~800 then 230 then out of stock. In all that time what ever I tried I always get an error message when I put the camera in my basket. I am mightily peed-off now!!!!

Does the camera support other frame rates than quoted 1-30fps? or importantly 1080p25

Er, 1-30 = 1 to 30 and all points inbetween.

EDIT: In fact I had trouble with 1fps, so it’s actually at the moment 2-30fps

Newark / Element14 Canadian website is dead!! Can’t place my order there. Won’t let me order it from their U.S. site. :(

Give them a call, they are doing a site update and it’s going wonky

is there any kind of exposure control currently available? shutter time or iso? I presume it is fixed aperture.

Fixed aperture. I did add some ISO stuff but never got it to work properly so it’s disabled for the moment. You can change exposure mode though, check out the detailed instructions linked from the article.

I own 2. Just tinkering for now. I use one for an openelec media center for movies on my samba share. Next step is to control the tv up and down via remote.I saw one one the series “revolution” yesterday. I wonder If it was running the mac lisa display.?

Exciting
If taking stills without preview is there a shutter lag? How long from issuing the command to exposing the image?

You can take an image without preview but it needs quite a few ms to power up the camera, start it streaming, then it uses a few frames to get statistical information on things like AWB, AGC etc. I’ve not actually tried it to see how much that delay can be reduced. You are probably talking at least 0.5s, if not more.

Thanks for that info.
It would be areal bonus to have some way to trigger exposure with minimal lag. Basically any shots of moving objects. Maybe a GPIO input could be used to switch from a ready state and a expose state.

Well, you have all the software freely available – fill ‘yer boots! (I’d suggest looking at the timelapse mode stuff which fires off a capture at intervals – no camera startup delays or AGC/AWB delays when doing that)

Awesome! Unfortunately my two pi’s are acting as a XMBC media server and full time Spigot minecraft server at the moment.

Dare I buy yet another one to build a video camera for my front door? My oh my that is tempting, shame battery power wouldn’t last a day though :(

Oh, one more thing – there appear to be TWO camera ports on the pi – could we hook up two cameras?

No, there is only one. The other connector is for a display but it isn’t possible to use adisplay on this connector at the moment.

Ahhh, that makes sense. Are there plans to support a display this way in the future?

Very early stages.

A single 2s lipo @ 450mah regulated to 5v 1a runs the pi for well over an hour, a small cheap compact pb cell from say maplins (uk) would probably do the job.

Hi,
Can someone list what we can do with this? Use it as security cam or some other stuff ?

Er, it’s a camera. The list is going to be pretty long…if you can think of a way to use a camera, then this can probably do it. Security camera is certainly one option. timelape, birdbox, baby monitor, video doorbell, weather monitor, ANPR – and that was after thinking about it for 10s.

Er, it’s a camera. You can view/capture videos and still pictures.

What you do with the video or images is down to your imagination.

I’ve read all the docs but can’t see any method to stop video recording once it has been started. I’m sure you must have thought of this so could you enlighten me? :)

It’s the timeout parameter – it records for as long as you tell it (default is 5s)

Video is a similar issue to still in controlling the timing. There will be many applications where you don’t know how long to record at the start.

It would be very useful if we could start the camera with a command, then snap/start/stop exposure/recording with additional commands. That way we could get a preview prior to asynchronous trigger with low latency, and start a recording that runs for as long a trigger condition is active.

Are the camera apps open source?

The example programs are entirely OSS, and available now. I didn’t have time to implement everything people might want – and to be honest, you should be writing this stuff yourself- after all – it’s all about the learning….

I wrote all the apps with the beginner in mind – there are all simple C and fully doxygen commented. I tried to make them as simple to understand as possible (there may be room for improvement!)

Yes,

Go look in github at

github.com/raspberrypi/userland

The software is in there…

Excellent answer, thanks, and well done!

Yes I got that, but say I want to film somebody blowing out their birthday candles. I don’t know ahead of time how long it is going to take them to blow out all the candles. So I would start the recording with a record time parameter of maybe 2 hours, but I want to be able to stop it recording after all candles are extinguished. I’m talking about the most basic functionality of a camcorder (start/stop). Please don’t take any of that in a mean spirited way – I just think you missed the point of my original question.

OK, it’s perfectly capable of doing that, but would need someone to update the software to work in that way. As said, the code supplied is example code that I expect people to modify to their own requirements – people can mangle it in any way they see fit! It’s not meant to be everything to everybody. People will be more than welcome to provide patches for their new functionality and if appropriate we will add them to the base software.

(Ctrl-C will stop recording btw)

On a related note, how long a video can the camera take? Is it a time limit or file size limit and can it be set to loop so that the files can be kept at a manageable size?

I guess its limited by the filesystem – 4GB? Should be good for a few hours anyway, depending on bitrate and fps.

Cool, that answers my question perfectly. Thanks :)

It won’t on mine. If I set a time but wish to stop the recording before that time has elapsed, no amount of ctrl-c presses will stop it

The camera lab is lacking a cat. That means it is missing out on the subject of 90% of all digital photos ever taken.

true story. if the camera is no good at rendering cat fur then it is basically useless.
:P

Just got in my order in before Newark took their website down.

I think is was brave to post how powerful the servers are the day before announcing some new hardware… :)

Me too. :)

yes some people will take it as a challenge. still its good to know that the community can still Pi a site :) we’re #1, we’re #1 :)

Can we use the cam module with OpenCV ?

It is possible to do this, but not through the V4L interface yet (people are busy).

Gordon

hi, pi is excellent. Can, if yes and how, I get the raw image file from raspi camera? The command raspistill has 4 options for output file formats: jpg, bmp, gif and png known from raspstill.c, but there is no option for the raw image file.

Use the raw option (–raw). This adds the raw bayer data to the jpeg metadata. How you extract that and use it is up to you.

thanks. Rasp pi can be used to computer vision directly in the lowest cost. The pi team is great.

Aghhh.. Canada Newark/Element 14 website ( http://canada.newark.com/) is down right now, and that’s really our only option for ordering in Canada at this point.

they have posted a phone number to use and a code to get a discount (not sure if the code is valid for the camera though)

I called and the code is good on the camera, not on the pi.

Thanks. I used that black box on my desk that isnt’ hooked up to a keyboard and was able to make a phone call and talk to a real person. Amazing Technology.

Fantastic service with a very friendly and helpful person at Newark. Camera is on order and discount code applied.

I wanted to order 2, one for me and one for my son’s pi, but it’s limited to one per order. We can share one camera for now.

Cannot wait to receive the cam and try out if my plan to make a blackbox kind motorcycle cam (press the “record” button and a video, beginning 1 minute in the past will be recorded) works

I don’t know why it wouldn’t work- continuous recording into a circular buffer, but it isn’t going to do good things to your flash memory lifetime, I think.

I guess if the circular buffer of 1 minute of video all fits into memory (i.e. you’d probably need a 512MB ModelB rather than a 256MB ModelA), you could then only write it to disk/flash when you actually press the button.

Just did a quick check, 30s of 720p20 at 5MBits/s (fairly decent quality) took about 12MB space. 720p30 was about 18MB, so storage in RAM and dump on button seem perfectly feasible.

Mine is ordered! Got it from MCM electronics in Ohio, USA.

Is there a datasheet for this camera? Specifications, etc..? What’s the spectral response we can expect? Will it detect Infra-red?

Thanks,
Dave

It’s an OV5647. Google is your friend. It has an IR filter that is probably impossible to remove safely.

Thanks for that…

Just googled and found this:

http://www.electronicspecifier.com/Optoelectronic-Sensors/OmniVision-Intros-1-4-Inch-5-MP-RAW-Image-Sensor-for-Mobile-Apps.asp

Is it just me, or does “backside illumination” conjure up rather a different image than the one they’re hoping to inspire?? :o)

I’m wondering whether it’s capable of doing long(er) exposures? Anyway, it’d be awesome if I could hook it up to my telescope to let the pi do some astrophotography!

You could always take lots of shorter exposures and stack them in software… You could also counteract the Earth’s rotation that way, without an equitorial mount.

True for planetary, yep. But for deep sky (maybe stupid with such a camera anyway) you’d need some seconds to get some photons.
I see the raspistill utility has an exposure option ‘verylong’, but no numeric input. Maybe code can show me.
I probably have to get one of those!

There is a upper limit to exposure time which is down to the sensor (I cannot remember exactly why, but it’s there). And its only a few seconds.

To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can get any deep sky picture you want, as long as it is 100% black :-). Don’t forget this is a mobile phone camera, with 1.4 um pixels. But if you are a brave and warranty-voiding person, you can do this:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=32605&start=225#p346170
The camera does provide RAW output (unlike any mobile phone I’ve heard of) so maybe with enough frame stacking, dark frame subtraction, field flattening etc. you could get something. I’d guess not, but happy to be proved wrong :-)

Taking many shorter exposures and stacking them does not collect the same light energy as the equivalent time of one longer exposure if there is any movement of the sensor, even due to just vibration. Stacking can improve resolution/focus precisely because of the noise of vibration in small amounts, though.

Fantastic! Can anyone tell me what bit rates are achievable with this camera (for video of course) and if there will be manual controls for white balance, exposure etc?

Upto 30MBits/s, perhaps a bit more. You’ll be limited by the SD card write speed I should think.

Check out the example code for white balance and other options.

For anyone ordering from Farnell with a credit/debit card, your minimum order needs to be £20. The camera module comes to £19.87 including VAT, so you’ll need to spend £0.13 on something else.

I fell into that trap, too. Bought an HDMI to DVI converter in the end, but I wasn’t best pleased.

Any reason not to order from CPC instead? No £20 order minimum and free delivery…

Yeah, I will add this module into a dummy security camera. :)

I realise that this doesn’t have supporting v4l drivers…but does it appear in /dev/video*? Can it be used with ‘motion’ ?

No, not yet. We need to get something like that going, but it’s not been started on yet.

Oh :( i was hoping it worked with motion.

Oh well, I will just have to try and wait patiently! i am sure the community will get it working if you guys don’t have time!

We do have people working on this, but you could try fixing it yourself rather than wait for ‘the community’

You are after all ‘the community’

That is after the point of Raspberry Pi…

Gordon

I know I am ‘the community’, BUT, I am in the newest of new section of the aforementioned community, well, when it comes to Linux anyway.

I have already learnt so much by owning my pi’s (3). but I am not quite ready to start messing around that deep! ;)

Gordon, does this require adding v4l2 support for the camera? If so, do you have any tips or pointers or a rough outline as to what needs to be done?

So now the camera’s out when can we expect the LCD port to be used and a LCD display available?

Well, the camera took almost 1 year from start to finish….most of that out of the Foundations control (i.e. not HW design or SW)

It is possible to record and stream at the same time?

Yes, but you would need to modify the software to do it. Not a big job. I leave it as an exercise for the reader.

Use the tee command. No need to modify any software.

I just discovered the tee command – Linux has everything!

When will the second batch become available? I’m on the waitlist for both… Unfortunately, I was on the metro when I got the “you can order” email, and then went out of service while the metro was having issues…

Got it. :-)

This is gonna be fun. Just ordered one. Thanks for your efforts to make this possible.

I read the documentation. Does anybody know what limits the framerate to 30fps?
Is that a limit in the controller, the sensor, or the CSI interface definition?

Most of the ideas I read so far can be realised with conventional cams.
But for me it would be interesting to create an el cheapo high speed camera with 100 or even more fps.

I am a drummer and want to analyse motion of hand and feet. I guess that would also be interesting in various
kind of sports (tennis, golf, soccer,…). Or in science to study movement of dogs, cats, insects, humans,
or to capture motion of problematic machine parts without paying thousands of bucks.

Cheers

We’ve only got camera modes working up to 1080p30. The sensor has an upper limit of 90fps at VGA (or was that 720p?). We certainly intend to work on getting the higher fps modes up and running.

Thanks for your response. Sounds not too bad!
I’m looking forward to follow all the developments!

Hi Could you help please just had the camera delivered plugged in working run the -d for both modes and my picture is a mirror image
Then took a picture and video both are mirror image ie Nikon is nokiN
this is with cable at bottom
Terry

Did you read the documentation? Sounds like you need to add the –hflip option to flip the image horizontally.

Element14 in Belgium doesn’t accept an order if it costs less than 50 euro. They also don’t sell PI to the end users.

Does someone know how I can order a camera?
Thank you in advance.

Best regards,
Ihor Hanin

Is RS an option?

Regards,
Charlie

Looks good, I managed to get one ordered earlier from Farnell before they sold out.
Any specs or estimates of the lag/delay (I’m afraid I don’t know what the correct terminology is!) between things happening in the real world, and things being displayed on screen (in preview mode)?

reports are that the lag is very small, a few tens of milliseconds. Not really noticeable.

Indeed it is. Very impressive :)

RS would only accept paypay – I hate PayPal, so I was willing to pay more to PF who would accept my credcard. If I could pay with bitcoins i would. But they are not mainstream enough (yet).

Also ordered one from RS (I am in Austria). On the PayPal payment page you can select guest and then pay with your credit card. Worked for me. How long it will take till I get my camera is a different story ….

Yes, but I deleted my paypal account when they last changed their T&C (to skim more money from vendors). Now my Credit Card is blacklisted by them on their system and they want so much proof (to even allow guest usage, let alone full account access) to confirm that I am me – photo ID and bank statements. I am unhappy and totally unwilling to provide any company (let alone a U.S. based one) with that much data to allow them to make money by skimming my transactions.

you don’t need a paypal account to pay with paypal, you just need a creditcard and use the paypal “guest” option. your creditcard will be billed by paypal for the vendor without you having a paypal account.

Can’t wait to get mine, assuming it takes less than the nearly six months it took for my original 256MB Model B Pi to be delivered. If I’m in for that kind of wait again, I might die of suffocation from beard overgrowth while napping under my favorite Rip Van Winkle Memorial Tree :D

So, when we specify a height and width, the image is squooshed to the specified dimensions from the entire raw image, the final image takes on the resulting aspect ratio, and resulting pixels are interpolated in the process according to some averaging algorithm (selectable, at some point, perhaps?), correct? IOW, the raw image is always the full sensor resolution and pixel bit-depth and gets winnowed down from that. Is the full raw image always embedded in a JPEG regardless of the specified modifications if the raw option is specified? Soooo many options to try out so I can stop asking questions that will be intuitively obvious to the loser, I mean, user ;)

Luckley i order one first thign this morning and got one from the US element 14 site :D shipped today with usps proirity! cant wait!!

That’s awesome news. Regarding video Streaming:

Has anybody tested latency using the given method of transmitting (raspivid + nc –> nc + Mplayer)?
I want to stream video digitally with minimal latency. Does this work out of the box (with those instructions), or do I have to start from scratch (on either the transmitting or the receiving end)?

When will some arrive in Australia?

RS-Australia tell me they have no idea.

I was just able to order one from the Element14 site in Australia. Quoting next day delivery. Charging $12.95 for delivery. So total cost, with GST $40.92.

Hi,

can i use the cam like an webcam? An i have access like /dev/video0 for any other capture programs?

thx!

We haven’t written drivers to allow access via /dev/video* yet.

okay so the cam is not an alternative for me or its planned to release a driver?

I was using mjpg to stream the cam, but the fps is really low, and I can’t change the fps since I was using input_file.so to watch a timelapse raspistill. I found out that if mjpg is able to look at dev/video0, then I can change the fps value. If and when will the cam show up in dev/video0?

I’d buy one but does anybody know if it works on a Raspberry Pi that runs Arch Linux instead of Raspbian?

Should do – you will need to update the firmware manually I suspect, and maybe the userland libraries as well.

It’s not a problem that I have, but I guess if anybody has only a ModelA Pi (and no WiFi connection) then they won’t be able to update their firmware to make use of the new camera?
Might be a good idea to push out a new OS download image soon ;-)

I’ve checked and a new image is on the way.

That’s good to hear.
Just out of curiosity I did a “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade” on a freshly-written 2013-02-09-wheezy-raspbian image, and it needed to downloaded 211MB of archives! Luckily I have a fast broadband connection…

…but it still took ages to install all those updated packages onto my SD card ;-)

Hi,

to view the feed in Linux, should the command be sudo apt-get install mplayer netcat

rather than
sudo apt-get install mplayer nc

as theere is no nc package according to http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/allpackages?format=txt.gz

Quite possibly – you need whichever package gets you ‘nc’

sudo apt-get install nc

will get you this:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package nc

so apart of mplayer what else should be installed as nc is not a valid debian package as per http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/allpackages?format=txt.gz

Err, you already gave the answer yourself…? On Ubuntu (so presumably on Debian too) you need to install the netcat package (since, unsurprisingly, that’s what ‘nc’ actually stands for).

I found I already had ‘nc’ installed (maybe from something else, but try nc command first).

Although the windows version got “snatched” by my anti-virus!

I can confirm it worked. Although be warned it scans through your windows fonts folder (for subtitle fonts).

Just a little scary to see that when you’ve pulled something out of the anti-virus to use “Scanning file C:/Windows/…”

Would someone be kind enough to post the flex cable specs. I see it is 15 pin, but is there a conductor spacing as well ?

Dunno if it helps, but repeatedly printed on the flex cable connected to my camera it says “E244054 squiggle AWM 2896 80C 30V VW-1″

I might have an idea why you want to know that. Most places sell these cables only in batches of 1000.
p.s. pitch is 1mm.

element14 lists the camera but sells with without a cable :S

Element14 sells the camera without a cable? This has all the earmarks of a big disappointment. Where does one get such a cable, then (in quantities less than 1000)?

No – the camera DEFINITELY comes with a cable. Where did you hear that it didn’t?

I am pleased to report that my camera came in today’s mail, and did indeed include a cable. It also included a very helpful “First things first” page that explains how to connect the camera. I’m happy. (I think the confusion about the cable comes from Element14’s (Newark’s) listing that says: “kit contents: board only”)

My camera module from Newark (Element14) showed up today, and it did include the ribbon cable.

I suspect that must be a typo or misunderstanding – AFAIK the Pi camera always comes with a cable attached.
What makes you think Element14 sell it without with a cable?

I contacted Element14, they said it does come with a cable and that they will fix the listing soon.

Are the mechanical specs somewhere? Would like to draw up a case.

On PiPod I just spotted a link to http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/05/pi-camera-module-mechanical-dimensions

Run the following command in a terminal to view the feed using MPlayer:

nc -l 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

didn´t work for me
i had to do

nc -l -p 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

sorry, i forgot to say
its on linux x86 (Wheezy)

As the last section of the article said you should run this piped command on Pi to “stream” the Pi’s feed to your machine:

raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [insert the IP address of the client == your x86 PC’s (Lan) IP] 5001

i know

It works.
Images maybe a little noisy, but images! Video! Cool!
I modded a Multicomp case to poke the camera block through the top face and the camera board is now tucked inside. Looks like a bit like a single use Kodak film camera.

Is there some sample footage of h.264, stills and stills with raw bayer metadata available to download? I’d love to check out camera original files while I wait for my boards to show up!

how could it be possible to use this camera with C programming or python?

best.

I meant with openCV.
thanks!

I guess you didn’t bother reading the rest of the comments? As has been mentioned several times, OpenCV support requires a V4L2 driver, and no such driver has yet been written for the RaspiCamera.
For programming in C, have a look at the sourcecode in github.

Thank you!!

Good news, after will be v4l and openmax support I’m going to order one

Keep the good work and thanks for this project

Apart from the two programs (raspistill & raspivid), is there a library available which I can use in a program?

Not yet…
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3890#comment-58075

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3890#comment-59663

Hi there!

Thanks for this awesome camera!!
I am having the following problem. I dont want the preview window to be shown, thus I give the following command:

raspistill -o image.jpg -t 10 -n

However, I get the following error:

mmal: Unknown status error
mmal: main: Failed to connect camera to preview
mmal: Unknow status error
Segmentation fault

Just to mention, the red LED of the camera turns on, like if it were working.

Danke!!!!!!!

Same, if “raspivid” is given (with proper changes in the comand).

Could anyone try, e.g.

raspivid -o test.h264 -n

or anything with the “-n” option (which is suppose not to show the preview). I would like to know if it works in any other Pi.

I looked for the part of the code which shows this error into the github.com .c/.h files in the mmal folder, but didnt find anything.

Thanks!

I found that typing:

raspivid -o test.h264 -p ‘0,0,0,0’

does not show the preview window. The zeros are for a window at 0,0 with width and height set to 0.

is it the same, as “-n” ???

There’s a intermittent bug in the preview code – see the forum for more detail. I’ve fixed it I think, but will need pushing to github.

I received the camera today and had it working great but now when I do raspivid -o /home/pi/cam/02.h264 -t 10000 -d or raspistill -o 07.jpg the red light on the cam comes on and then nothing else happens if I ctrl-c I get Cmmal: Aborting program but ther red light on the cam does nto go out. this person also has same trouble (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=43897&p=349815), I’m on rasbian (I did updte, upgrade)

Further to my last post, this might be useful, I am running over ssh without a GUI loaded.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ raspistill -o 07.jpg -n -v

RaspiStill Camera App
=====================

Width 2592, Height 1944, quality 85, filename 07.jpg
Time delay 5000, Raw no
Thumbnail enabled Yes, width 64, height 48, quality 35

Preview No, Full screen Yes
Preview window 0,0,1024,768

Sharpness 0, Contrast 0, Brightness 50
Saturation 0, ISO 400, Video Stabilisation No, Exposure compensation 0
Exposure Mode ‘auto’, AWB Mode ‘auto’, Image Effect ‘none’
Metering Mode ‘average’, Colour Effect Enabled No with U = 128, V = 128
Rotation 0, hflip No, vflip No
Camera component done
Encoder component done
Starting component connection stage
mmal: Unknown status error
mmal: main: Failed to connect camera to preview
mmal: Unknown status error
Closing down
Segmentation fault
pi@raspberrypi ~ $

Should be a fix for that now – see the forums

Sorry If I sound A bit dim, but which forum? (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=43897&p=349815)?

Look in the camera forum for topics involving preview

The simplest way for playing live stream from the camera is ssh ;)
ssh pi@192.168.1.16 sudo raspivid -t 1000000000 -b 20000000 -o – -vf -fps 25 -ex nightpreview | mplayer -fps 25 -cache 1024 –

Mine arrived today. Noticed that the raspistill -vf option prevents the preview from working properly. Will fetch the source for a look later. Also haven’t managed to get the streaming working from Pi to Mac yet. Haven’t given up yet tho! Looking forward to playing with the 90fps mode.

I also have problems with straming to a mac:

nc -l -p 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –
usage: nc [-46AcCDdFhklnrtUuvz] [-K tc] [-b boundif] [-i interval] [-p source_port]
[-s source_ip_address] [-w timeout] [-X proxy_version]
[-x proxy_address[:port]] [hostname] [port[s]]
MPlayer 1.1-4.2.1 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team

Playing -.
Reading from stdin…
Cache fill: 0.00% (0 bytes)

libavformat version 54.6.101 (internal)

Exiting… (End of file)

Man page for nc says:

-l Used to specify that nc should listen for an incoming connection
rather than initiate a connection to a remote host. It is an
error to use this option in conjunction with the -p, -s, or -z
options. Additionally, any timeouts specified with the -w option
are ignored.

So this command is definitely wrong.

This worked for me:

nc -l 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

This will work to view feed from Raspberry on OSX

Brew install mplayer and netcat on OSX.

1) Start listening on OSX: nc -l 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –
2) Then start sending on RB: raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [ip address of OSX] 5001

Please note:
– as others have noted: the listening command is nc -l 5001, without the -p option.
– at first I could’t get it to work because I copied and pasted the commands from this page. It turned out that the dash character after -o was converted to some other character that looked the same. Deleting the dash and just typing a new one made things work. (Note: I work on a SSH shell tot the RB so all typing is done on OSX). Go figure.

Marcel

Here is my contribution to the test videos:

Raspberry Pi Camera board modul 1080p 30 fps test video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wjunxAUIds

Why can’t I play my recorded videos directly in windows media player? or e.g. mplayer??

It seems like that the video is missing some kind of “encapsulation” of the raw h264 data stream?

Update! Solution found! :-)

How to shoot video and convert it to something you can edit in Pinnacle and other programs:
http://raspi.tv/2013/how-to-shoot-video-and-convert-it-to-something-you-can-edit-in-pinnacle-and-other-programs?utm_source=feedly

try:
avconv -r 30 -i video.h264 -vcodec copy video.mkv

avconv -r 30 -i video.h264 -vcodec copy video.mp4

Just adding a test video more.

My 2nd test video Raspberry Pi Camera Board module 1080p 30 fps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u16751NM3x0&feature=youtu.be

:-)

Hi,

i got my camery yesterday and have some problems after installing the new update.

I did apt-get update + apt-get upgrade.

after reboot the pi didn’t start. Image seems to be broken and I have to reinstall respbian.

What should I do to fix this problem?

Regards Meyk

Please repost on the forum where lots more people will see your question.

Just fixed it:

on Windows: copy all files to temp and format the SD. Finally copy the files back to the SD.

There’s a very slight (but crucial) typo in the command above for sending streamed video from the Raspberry Pi. It reads:

raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [insert the IP address of the client] 5001

but as it stands it won’t work (even if you insert the IP address) because the character just before the pipe character is not a hyphen but a longer dash (emdash?)

The command needs to be:

raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [insert the IP address of the client] 5001

to get it to work.

The stupid web site has amended my previous comment and again changed the hyphen into a longer dash. Just remember to change it back if you cut and paste the command line.

RE Streaming . Set the Mplayer to -fps 40 and it reduced the streaming lag to 0.5s, nice, with 1024 cache it was over buffering 45% and delaying playback on my laptop, set cache to 512 and fps to 40 and buffer was 1%,
also set -w 640 -h 480 . The Pi would REBOOT with any other window. Thanks to LEEDS HACKSPACE , RPi meeting today.

to view on mac osx..
the nc -l p 5001 I think should be just nc -l 5001 … l and p conflict according to the man page .. and of course in my case it only worked with l 5001 ..

Are they still in stock anywhere? I was about to order it from RS, but then I’ve noticed that it says “Despatch expected within 12 week(s)”… Element14 says that they are expected in 93 days.

You were smarter than me then! I ordered one, then realised it was a 12 week dispatch time! Which sounds longer. 12 weeks or 3 months?

Hi
I received the cam last week and was really impressed till my beloved girlfriend crash the cable… :(
I tried to strip this cable to avoid the damaged part but in vain…
Any mean to buy some ? this part is not a custom part i hope… which wouldn’t be a good things no ?
Thanx in advanced for your answers
J./

I have the feeling that the camera module fried my Pi! I had it all running fine, and today I tried to capture lots of pictures to create a timelapse video. The jpg files would be stored on a shared drive that is mounted. I don’t use ethernet, just a wifi dongle.

After about 300 pictures, the Pi froze, and now it won’t come back to life. I tried to reboot with older backup images, but the result is the same: the red light comes on, the yellow blinks for a minute or so as if booting up, then the red light remains solid, but nothing else. No output to the connected display, no way to log in remotely. I have to assume that the Pi is dead, because I don’t know what else to try.

I’ve had it running for months, and it has never had any problems, until I plugged in the camera yesterday, so I have to wonder if the camera, combined with transmitting large files over wifi, stressed out the board so much that something failed. Has anyone else seen this? I am very reluctant to plug the camera into my second Pi, because I don’t trust it not to cause the same kind of damage.

Very frustrating…

Did you try booting after removing the camera module? Tried using a different power supply?

By information elsewhere, the camera can draw 280mA when in use. With the Pi and whatever loads are on the USB ports, this may have pushed the polyfuse past 700mA. The polyfuse can take hours or days to self-reset. So let the Pi rest for perhaps a day.

If you can, check the log coming out of the serial port or on screen, sometimes with marginal power my Pi will drop into a monitor and sit there waiting. If it is waiting for input, type “boot” and hit return.

You might try providing 5 volts via the GPIO or a USB hub that provides power into one of the regular USB ports instead of the micro-USB; that will bypass the polyfuse and allow more total current if your power supply is up to it.

Thanks for the excellent explanation of how to configure the camera.
Here’s an advice: don’t forget to remove the small plastic sheet from the camera. It will greatly improve the quality of your picture.

I share you my first sample of timelapse with raps + camera module;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v40zUSi7zI

finally succeeded in getting video’s treamed.
Don’t copy paste the commands in the tutorial above, they will fill up you’re SD card in a snap. It should be : raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc -v [you’re nc server address] 5001
At the server side (opensuse linux 11.3 ), I’l had to use this
command : nc -l 0.0.0.0 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

Does Android natively support this camera because it has a standard MIPI CSI interface, or would it need the drivers ported over?

Why do i get very very bad focus on any distance?

Have you peeled the protective plastic off?

Yes, I did. But the problem was, the lens was bad placed. So i forced to rotate it to refocus and now it work.

Wish you would figure out a way to gauge demand before you claim I can buy your camera module. I don’t like the Thunder Dome model you choose for your releases.

Hi guys
if someones want a working example of rtsp and http streaming with vlc player

raspivid -o – -t 999999999 -w 720 -h 360 -rot 180 -n -vs -awb auto -ex auto | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin –sout ‘#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:554/}’ :demux=h264
raspivid -o – -t 999999999 -w 800 -h 600 -rot 180 -n -vs -awb auto -ex auto | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin –sout ‘#standard{access=http,mux=ts,dst=:8554}’ :demux=h264

ps: if you got error “VLC is not supposed to be run as root. SORRY…” here is a fix:
http://www.hackersgarage.com/vlc-is-not-supposed-to-be-run-as-root-sorry-solution.html

;)

Hi,

I am trying to recieve video from a pi on a pi, but when I type the command nc -p 5001 -l > buffer | /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/hello_video.bin buffer I get this error:

bash: /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/hellow_video.bin: Permission denied

I have tried having sudo before both the /opt and the buffer and I also ran it in the root terminal. Is there something I am missing? Does anyone else have this problem?

mkfifo buffer
was used?

Kind of annoying that the post has a link to the element14 community page and that doesn’t contain a link to the shop…. And me being me, google>element14>list of element14 community pages!
and then do I have to type in Farnell and finally get to the shop…
not being picky your work is awesome but for someone like me working on a guide to Raspberry Pi for my IT office, time is everything. Spent a good 5 min trying to find a link on the community page.

Not our fault this time: they asked for the link to point there.

As a nooby to Linux and the Pi, I had trouble getting through this webpage to stream video from a camera pi to a monitoring pi.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/camera-board
I had to look at;
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=45939
and;
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=352717#p352717
to get the info needed to get it going.
The result was astonishment at the clarity of the video, giving full screen (1920 x 1080p) on the pi’s
Going through both HDMI’s I was able to switch from one to the other.
I would recommend though until you find the ‘|’ charactor on your keyboard, copy and paste selected code.
(It’s ‘shift \’ by the way)
So between the three webpages, I got what I needed and learnt something too.

Thanks guys’

Anyone have a recommendation for a box to mount the camera in?

BTW ordered my camera from Amazon UK. Arrived four days later (and I live in Germany) :)

You might be ineterested in this Kickstart project If you want a sealed enclosure:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1821240043/pice-the-pi-camera-enclosure

Can anyone tell for sure if the camera cable pitch is 1.25mm or 1.00mm

BTW, the E2440654 is the UL File Number and relates to the fire rating. The AWM 2896 is

Thanks!!!

Can anyone help??
when i use the command “raspivid -t 999999 -o – | nc [insert the IP address of the client] 5001” i always get returned with “invalid command line option (nc)”. I enter in the bash by using alt+0166. has anyone ells seen this problem before??

If you go and ask this question in the forums, the camera board developers are there to help.

You should install netcat (sudo apt-get install netcat)

I am trying to broadcast the camera over the internet I have done as it says and no errors come up but all that happens is I get a image preview on the pi for about a second and then it quits and nothing else happens

Hi,
I already finished the setting that you described in “To view the feed on OS X” and “To transmit the feed from the Pi with camera module attached”.

However, I couldn’t see any video stream show up in my MAC PRO?

Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks in advance :)

Hi guys,

I am working on a small project where we want to incorporate the raspberry PI with two cameras and specific filters to monitor a spectral vegetation index. Until now, we desperately try using webcams. Problem: the images are not truly raw (ie. the sensor response to light should be linear, but is far from that).

Reading about the PI camera unit sounds very promissing to me. I read already that people managed to remove the IR filter (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4088), which is something we require as well. Further, the documentation of the software (https://github.com/raspberrypi/userland/tree/master/host_applications/linux/apps/raspicam) reports that raw bayer data can be embedded in a .jpeg. Awesome!!!

However, I was wondering if anyone tried to see how linear the camera responses are to exposure (ie. if the camera looks at a scene with static illumination and you ramp up the exposure time, does the camera response value go up linear with the exposure time?). If they are, this is exactly what we will go for!!

Anyone out there has in-depth knowledge on such aspects?? I would be happy to discuss this further…

Thanks and greetings
TImo

…moved this post to teh camera forum:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=43

Guess that would be the right place to ask this question…

Greetings
Timo

running the following on the pi will create a persistent video server.
while [ 1 ]; do echo "started"; raspivid -t 999999 -o - | nc -l -p 9090; done

this will allow clients to connect and disconnect to the video stream freely with the command
nc pi_ip 9090 | mplayer -fps 31 cache 1024 -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjTpFR0oYQ

have had to cancel my order very sorry
thought the camera module would include a component video input connection for encoding video at 1080p 30 frames per second – or even a composite input – this is what i need not a silly lens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjTpFR0oYQ

is it not possible to use a USB tv capture or usb digital tv tuner with the device – either of these might at least have composite&or s-video input
though trying to find one with component input is like a needle in a haystack!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjTpFR0oYQ

can i use an
itu t v44+IPR=921600 v92 modem with a usb mobile broadband dongle please – the telephone modem is faster than the broadband service hear – its very agricultural

I want to connect the camera board to another processor board. Is there any documentation of the “flex cable” interface available?

Thanks

I have a similar issue with different error, when i type:
raspistill -o test.jpg -v
the led light in the camera module goes on and freezes! after a few seconds on the command line i get this error:
mmal received unexpected camera control callback event

i thought that i damaged my camera module so i got a new one, attached it, started the same command to receive the same error! what’s the solution guys! :(

Please post technical questions on the forum. There is a dedicated camera section.

I am unable to enable the picam module using:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

getting the error:
The following packages have been kept back:
gnome-themes-standard libqt4-dbus libqt4-network libqt4-svg libqt4-xml
libqtcore4 libqtgui4 libraspberrypi-bin libraspberrypi-dev
libraspberrypi-doc libraspberrypi0 qdbus raspberrypi-bootloader
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.

sudo raspi-config
There was an error running option 5 Enable Camera

Am I doing something dumb?
Thanks!
– Doug

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