Build a RaspberryPi straming server
Hardwares needed
RaspberryPi 3B
RaspberryPi Camera
Softwares needed
python-picamera
install the picamera lib
sudo apt-get install python-picamera
Enable picamera
sudo raspi-config
choose interfacing options -> enable the camera, then reboot the pi:
sudo reboot
Check the picamera is working
create a camera.py file, and copy following code snippet in the file.
#! /usr/bin/python
from picamera import PiCamera
from time import sleep
camera = PiCamera()
camera.start_preview()
sleep(5)
camera.capture('/home/pi/file/image001.jpg')
camera.stop_preview()
If there is a image called image001.jpg has been taken in the directory, it shows the camera is working as expected.
vlc
Compile vlc with hardware acceleration
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=195221
install vlc on client
sudo apt-get install vlc
Run vcl streaming on raspberrypi
raspivid -o - -t 0 -n | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/}' :demux=h264
Create a shell script for future use
#!/bin/bash
raspivid -o - -t 0 -n | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/}' :demux=h264
Specifying camera resoluation
raspivid -o - -t 0 -n -w 600 -h 400 -fps 12 | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/}' :demux=h264
Watching streaming videos on client
Open the vlc player -> Media -> Network streaming -> Network, input the rtsp streaming address in the input box: rtsp://192.168.0.200:8554/, notice that you cannot drop the slash, otherwise you cannot connect to the straming server; it will show error like this:
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'rtsp://192.168.0.200:8554'. Check the log for details.
If anthing goes well, now, you can watch the real time video camputred by the pi camera though the latency
is a big issue. The following image shows my straming server is working properly:
The real time streaming
Though there’s about 5 seconds latency, the streaming seems works just fine.