| .. SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0 |
| |
| .. section-begin-libcamera |
| |
| =========== |
| libcamera |
| =========== |
| |
| **A complex camera support library for Linux, Android, and ChromeOS** |
| |
| Cameras are complex devices that need heavy hardware image processing |
| operations. Control of the processing is based on advanced algorithms that must |
| run on a programmable processor. This has traditionally been implemented in a |
| dedicated MCU in the camera, but in embedded devices algorithms have been moved |
| to the main CPU to save cost. Blurring the boundary between camera devices and |
| Linux often left the user with no other option than a vendor-specific |
| closed-source solution. |
| |
| To address this problem the Linux media community has very recently started |
| collaboration with the industry to develop a camera stack that will be |
| open-source-friendly while still protecting vendor core IP. libcamera was born |
| out of that collaboration and will offer modern camera support to Linux-based |
| systems, including traditional Linux distributions, ChromeOS and Android. |
| |
| .. section-end-libcamera |
| .. section-begin-getting-started |
| |
| Getting Started |
| --------------- |
| |
| To fetch the sources, build and install: |
| |
| :: |
| |
| git clone git://linuxtv.org/libcamera.git |
| cd libcamera |
| meson build |
| ninja -C build install |
| |
| Dependencies |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| The following Debian/Ubuntu packages are required for building libcamera. |
| Other distributions may have differing package names: |
| |
| A C++ toolchain: [required] |
| Either {g++, clang} |
| |
| Meson Build system: [required] |
| meson (>= 0.55) ninja-build pkg-config |
| |
| If your distribution doesn't provide a recent enough version of meson, |
| you can install or upgrade it using pip3. |
| |
| .. code:: |
| |
| pip3 install --user meson |
| pip3 install --user --upgrade meson |
| |
| for the libcamera core: [required] |
| python3-yaml python3-ply python3-jinja2 |
| |
| for IPA module signing: [required] |
| libgnutls28-dev openssl |
| |
| for the Raspberry Pi IPA: [optional] |
| libboost-dev |
| |
| Support for Raspberry Pi can be disabled through the meson |
| 'pipelines' option to avoid this dependency. |
| |
| for device hotplug enumeration: [optional] |
| libudev-dev |
| |
| for documentation: [optional] |
| python3-sphinx doxygen graphviz |
| |
| for gstreamer: [optional] |
| libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev |
| |
| for cam: [optional] |
| libevent-dev |
| |
| for qcam: [optional] |
| qtbase5-dev libqt5core5a libqt5gui5 libqt5widgets5 qttools5-dev-tools libtiff-dev |
| |
| for tracing with lttng: [optional] |
| liblttng-ust-dev python3-jinja2 lttng-tools |
| |
| Using GStreamer plugin |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| To use GStreamer plugin from source tree, set the following environment so that |
| GStreamer can find it. |
| |
| export GST_PLUGIN_PATH=$(pwd)/build/src/gstreamer |
| |
| The debugging tool ``gst-launch-1.0`` can be used to construct a pipeline and |
| test it. The following pipeline will stream from the camera named "Camera 1" |
| onto the default video display element on your system. |
| |
| .. code:: |
| |
| gst-launch-1.0 libcamerasrc camera-name="Camera 1" ! videoconvert ! autovideosink |
| |
| .. section-end-getting-started |
| |
| Troubleshooting |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| Several users have reported issues with meson installation, crux of the issue |
| is a potential version mismatch between the version that root uses, and the |
| version that the normal user uses. On calling `ninja -C build`, it can't find |
| the build.ninja module. This is a snippet of the error message. |
| |
| :: |
| |
| ninja: Entering directory `build' |
| ninja: error: loading 'build.ninja': No such file or directory |
| |
| This can be solved in two ways: |
| |
| 1) Don't install meson again if it is already installed system-wide. |
| |
| 2) If a version of meson which is different from the system-wide version is |
| already installed, uninstall that meson using pip3, and install again without |
| the --user argument. |