You have a Raspberry Pi, or are comfortable with the idea of using one, and you want to use it to capture video or images using a USB camera. Even though the Raspberry Pi has a port designed specifically for using a camera, it’s not as low-cost, nor as convenient as the USB corded camera.
CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (B Plus) Starter Kit (32 GB EVO+ Edition, Premium Black Case)
It would be a lot nicer if you had a web interface to access, view, and manage the content you’ve capture using the USB camera. Learn to set up a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack on your Raspberry Pi and configure it to work as a web server and set up a basic website which you can access on any device on the same network as your Pi. This is a link to a nice tutorial for setting-up a L.A.M.P. server on your Pi, the WordPress portion is optional, you can stop after installing PHP.
Motion
Motion is the tool that you will want to use if you want to live stream, record video, capture motion, and grab a lot of snapshots. More options means a lot more configuration options making setup more complex.
download and install:
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get upgrade
- sudo apt-get install motion
usage: See /etc/motion/ for configuration file(s). The documentation for Motion is contained within the file motion_guide.html.
The offline version of this file is available in the doc/motion directory. The online version of the motion_guide.html file can be viewed here
fswebcam
fswebcam is a simple tool for grabbing snapshots using a USB connected camera and can be configured to execute routinely using the operating system’s cron job scheduler.
download and install:
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get upgrade
- sudo apt-get install fswebcam
usage: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/webcams/
More:
- Why DIY when you could buy?
- Why Arduino when you can Pi?
- Making a Lightshow with Arduino
- Making Sound Effects with Arduino
- Phoenix Fire Lily
- Wired or Wireless?
- What is a “Smart” Garden?
- Starting a Smart Indoor Garden
Make a Touch Screen Kiosk
Raspberry Pi 7″ Touchscreen Display
AND
SmartiPi Touch case for The Official Raspberry Pi 7″ Touchscreen Display – Adjustable Angle
