mediamtx/docs/3-publish/14-raspberry-pi-cameras.md

Raspberry Pi Cameras

MediaMTX natively supports most Raspberry Pi Camera models, enabling high-quality and low-latency video streaming from the camera to any user, for any purpose. There are some additional requirements:

1. The server must run on a Raspberry Pi, with one of the following operating systems:

   • Raspberry Pi OS Trixie
   • Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm
   • Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye

   Both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures are supported.

2. If you are using Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye, make sure that the legacy camera stack is disabled. Type sudo raspi-config, then go to Interfacing options, enable/disable legacy camera support, choose no. Reboot the system.

The setup procedure depends on whether you want to run the server outside or inside Docker:

• If you want to run the standard (non-Dockerized) version of the server:

  1. Download the server executable. If you're using 64-bit version of the operative system, make sure to pick the arm64 variant.

  2. Edit mediamtx.yml and replace everything inside section paths with the following content:

  paths:
    cam:
      source: rpiCamera
  

  The resulting stream will be available on path /cam.

• If you want to run the server inside Docker, you need to use the 1-rpi image and launch the container with some additional flags:

  docker run --rm -it \
  --network=host \
  --privileged \
  --tmpfs /dev/shm:exec \
  -v /run/udev:/run/udev:ro \
  -e MTX_PATHS_CAM_SOURCE=rpiCamera \
  bluenviron/mediamtx:1-rpi
  

The Raspberry Pi Camera can be controlled through a wide range of parameters, that are listed in the configuration file.

Custom libcamera

Some cameras, in particular ArduCam products, require a custom libcamera. These are not compatible with precompiled MediaMTX binaries and Docker images, since they embed a standard libcamera.

If you want to interact with these cameras, you need to compile MediaMTX from source.

Adding audio

In order to add audio from a USB microphone, install GStreamer and alsa-utils:

sudo apt install -y gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-rtsp gstreamer1.0-alsa alsa-utils

list available audio cards with:

arecord -L

Sample output:

surround51:CARD=ICH5,DEV=0
    Intel ICH5, Intel ICH5
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
default:CARD=U0x46d0x809
    USB Device 0x46d:0x809, USB Audio
    Default Audio Device

Find the audio card of the microphone and take note of its name, for instance default:CARD=U0x46d0x809. Then create a new path that takes the video stream from the camera and audio from the microphone:

paths:
  cam:
    source: rpiCamera

  cam_with_audio:
    runOnInit: >
      gst-launch-1.0
      rtspclientsink name=s location=rtsp://localhost:$RTSP_PORT/cam_with_audio
      rtspsrc location=rtsp://127.0.0.1:$RTSP_PORT/cam latency=0 ! rtph264depay ! s.
      alsasrc device=default:CARD=U0x46d0x809 ! opusenc bitrate=16000 ! s.
    runOnInitRestart: yes

The resulting stream will be available on path /cam_with_audio.

Secondary stream

It is possible to enable a secondary stream from the same camera, with a different resolution, FPS and codec. Configuration is the same of a primary stream, with rpiCameraSecondary set to true and parameters adjusted accordingly:

paths:
  # primary stream
  rpi:
    source: rpiCamera
    # Width of frames.
    rpiCameraWidth: 1920
    # Height of frames.
    rpiCameraHeight: 1080
    # FPS.
    rpiCameraFPS: 30

  # secondary stream
  secondary:
    source: rpiCamera
    # This is a secondary stream.
    rpiCameraSecondary: true
    # Width of frames.
    rpiCameraWidth: 640
    # Height of frames.
    rpiCameraHeight: 480
    # FPS.
    rpiCameraFPS: 10
    # Codec. in case of secondary streams, it defaults to M-JPEG.
    rpiCameraCodec: auto
    # JPEG quality.
    rpiCameraMJPEGQuality: 60

The secondary stream will be available on path /secondary.