The project should make it possible to control a Pi Camera connected via CSI to a Raspi Zero W using a REST service. The REST service can be accessed via a Wi-Fi hotspot.
The following recording features are implemented:
- Single Image
- Video (start/stop)
The project is based on the idea of an independent companion computer for drones for imaging with special cameras (e.g. a [NOIR Pi Camera] NOIRPiCamera). For more information why we need this type of camera, see here.
Start from a fresh new Raspberry Pi OS Lite (the following steps where tested using this version). Connect it with your WiFi and login using ssh (this can be prepared using the imager).
Connect the Camera to your Raspberry and login via ssh to activate your Pi
Camera as described here. Be aware that you need a
special CSI cable for the Pi Zero. In case your images appear red,
append awb_auto_is_greyworld=1 to the end of /boot/config.txt. In
addition to this you have to increase the gpu memory to 256MB for full
resolution images, see the performance options in raspi-config.
The following command installs the FastAPI REST service and the automatic start up scripts.
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pd-t/raspi-zero-fastapi-camera-control/main/install.sh | sudo sh
After reboot the REST service is available under
http://RASPI_ZERO_IP:8000/docs. The images and videos are saved to
/camera on the Raspberry Pi.
As mentioned before, the original idea was to provide a REST service for drone companion computers far away from given Wi-Fi infrastructure. In order to still have access to the REST service under these circumstances, a hotspot can be activated. Just execute the following command:
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pd-t/raspi-zero-fastapi-camera-control/main/hotspot/setup.sh | sudo sh
Afterwards, connect to CameraControl network using the password
CameraControl. This makes REST service available at http://192.168.4. 1:8000/docs.
Feel free to adapt this code to your project. There is a poetry environment provided which can be activated using
poetry install
poetry shell
Afterwards, you can run the FastAPI code with
PYTHONPATH="." python src/run.py
and access the docs at http://localhost:8000/docs.
An almost working base for the API can be generated the OpenAPI specification:
fastapi-codegen --input oas/openapi.yaml -t jinja --output src
Last but not least for isolated testing a docker version is provided.
docker-compose up app
On a capable system like the Raspberry Pi version 3 or 4, it is definitely
an option to deploy the application using docker. Remember to add the
restart: always flag to the docker-compose script.
This project under the terms of both the MIT license.
See LICENSE for details.