Raspberry Pi Camera Module Is Now Available, How-to Use It

About one year after showing the first image from the camera module prototype, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Camera board is now available for purchase on RS Component or Element14. Navigating either of these sites is a nightmare, but, if you’re lucky, you should eventually find the camera board for around $25 before taxes and shipping.

“Raspicam” features the following hardware specifications:

Omnivision 5647 sensor in a fixed-focus module
5MPixel sensor
Still picture resolution: 2592 x 1944
Max video resolution: 1080p
Max frame rate: 30fps
Size: 20 x 25 x 10mm
Connection by flat ribbon cable to 15-pin MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) connector S5 on Raspberry Pi computer board

The first thing you’ll have to do with the camera is to connect it to the CSI connector on your Raspberry Pi, just behind the Ethernet connector on model B. James explains it very clearly in the video below.

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Now that the camera is connected, you’ll need to update your Raspbian installation. Login to your pi, and run those commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

1 2	sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade

This may take a little while. After completion, run

sudo raspi-config

1	sudo raspi-config

and enable the camera module, as shown below.

Save the settings, and reboot.

Two command lines applications called raspivid and raspstill are available respectively to capture video and still images.

Some example s:

Capture an image in jpeg format:

raspistill -o image.jpg

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raspistill -o image.jpg
Capture a 5s video in h264 format:

raspivid -o video.h264

1

raspivid -o video.h264
Capture a 10s video:

raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

1

raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

You can use the arrow keys to scroll, and type q to exit. Read here for further details.

It’s also possible to stream the Feed to a Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows computer:

Linux PC
Install dependencies:

sudo apt-get install mplayer netcat-openbsd

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sudo apt-get install mplayer netcat-openbsd

and run the following command:

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

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nc -l 5001 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 -
Windows PC
Download MPlayer and Netcat.
Start a command promt, and type the following type:

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

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[Path to nc.exe]\nc.exe -L -p 5001 | [Path to mplayer.exe]\mplayer.exe -fps 31 -cache 1024 -
Mac OS X
Download MPlayer.
Run the following command in Terminal to view the feed using MPlayer:

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

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

You may also want to view the feed directly from the Raspberry Pi:

mkfifo buffer
nc -p 5001 -l &gt; buffer | /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/hello_video.bin buffer

1 2	mkfifo buffer nc -p 5001 -l > buffer \| /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/hello_video.bin buffer

Raspicam source code is available on github.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.