picamera-webserver

This is a minimalistic web server that controls a Raspberry Pi's attached PiCamera.

It was extracted from [https://github.com/tlack/dobot-tcn/](my robot training framework) because I thought it might be useful to others.

It is useful for creating video data sets for repeated experiments. In my usage a single application instance controls numerous semi-synchronized cameras on the LAN.

Features and Status

HTTP API allows you to start and stop video recording. There is an endpoint that fetches video contents and an endpoint that returns a list of current videos.

Uses Flask. On Google AIY Bonnet boards, will make alert noise when shooting.

Usage

Edit camera settings on first line.

Run one copy of this script on each PiCamera node.

HTTP API

The API presents these endpoints:

index

http://0.0.0.0:5858/

Returns listing of known videos

start

http://0.0.0.0:5858/start?fname=test.h264

Start recording to named video file

stop

http://0.0.0.0:5858/start

Stop recording

send

http://0.0.0.0:5858/send?fname=test.h264

Retrieve contents of video. Returned as Base64 string inside JSON structure:

{"fn": "test.h264", "data": "...enormous string...", "size": 123123}

Todo

Soon: return very exacting timing data for shutter open and shutter close, number of frames, etc.

Support CNN inference on Google AIY boards.

Record / return various sensor readings along with video data.

HTML page to view current camera frame. Or websockets! :D

Help

These are tiny scripts. Read the source. Create a Github issue for more help.