PiCamera setup

Warning

This is a work in progress!

Getting started

To set up the PiCamera you first need to install a fresh OS on your Raspberry Pi Zero W.

Burn a new Raspberry Pi OS Lite image

We recommend the Raspberry Pi Imager tool to burn a new Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit) Lite. You can find it here.

Or you can download an official ZIP here.

Accessing the PiZero

A - Enable SSH remote access

After installing the Raspberry Pi OS, add an empty file ssh in the boot partition to enable SSH access.

Warning

As we will later use the Wi-Fi from the PiZero to create an Access Point, we recommend to use the ethernet port to SSH in the PiZero.

B - Use local access

Otherwise, use a screen and keyboard to access the PiZero.

Raspberry Pi OS setup

Before installing the software, you have to configure some Raspberry Pi OS settings & change the password.

Change the password

For security reasons, you have to change the pi user password because the default is known by everyone!

Use the raspi-config tool to do it:

sudo raspi-config

Warning

The default password is raspberry!

Edit the timezone & locales

Change the timezone to get the right time from the PiZero clock! You may also change the locales to suits your needs.

Create the Wi-Fi Access Point

We will now create the AP using command lines following the tutorial from: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-3-as-an-access-point/all.

You may also be interested in doing this with a graphical interface, and we would highly recommend raspap-webgui.

Install Packages

To install the required packages, enter the following into the console:

sudo apt-get -y install hostapd dnsmasq

Set Static IP Address

Edit the dhcpcd.conf file:

sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

At the bottom of the file, add:

denyinterfaces wlan0

Save and exit by pressing Ctrl+X and Y when asked.

Next, we need to tell the Raspberry Pi to set a static IP address for the Wi-Fi interface. Open the interfaces file with the following command:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

At the bottom of that file, add the following:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
    address 192.168.0.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.0.0
    broadcast 192.168.0.255

Configure Hostapd

We need to set up hostapd to tell it to broadcast a particular SSID and allow Wi-Fi connections on a certain channel. Edit the hostapd.conf file (this will create a new file, as one likely does not exist yet) with this command:

sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

Enter the following into that file. Feel fee to change the ssid (Wi-Fi network name) and the wpa_passphrase (password to join the network) to whatever you'd like. You can also change the channel to something in the 1-11 range (if channel 6 is too crowded in your area).

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=romi_hotspot
hw_mode=g
channel=6
ieee80211n=1
wmm_enabled=1
ht_capab=[HT40][SHORT-GI-20][DSSS_CCK-40]
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
wpa=2
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_passphrase=raspberry
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

Save and exit by pressing Ctrl+X and Y when asked.

Unfortunately, hostapd does not know where to find this configuration file, so we need to provide its location to the hostapd startup script.

Open /etc/default/hostapd:

sudo nano /etc/default/hostapd

Find the line #DAEMON_CONF="" and replace it with:

DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"

Save and exit by pressing Ctrl+X and Y when asked.

Configure Dnsmasq

Dnsmasq will help us automatically assign IP addresses as new devices connect to our network as well as work as a translation between network names and IP addresses. The .conf file that comes with Dnsmasq has a lot of good information in it, so it might be worthwhile to save it (as a backup) rather than delete it. After saving it, open a new one for editing:

sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.bak
sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf

In the blank file, paste in the text below.

interface=wlan0 
listen-address=192.168.0.1
bind-interfaces 
server=8.8.8.8
domain-needed
bogus-priv
dhcp-range=192.168.0.100,192.168.0.200,24h

Test Wi-Fi connection

Restart the Raspberry Pi using the following command:

sudo reboot

After your Pi restarts (no need to log in), you should see romi_hotspot appear as a potential wireless network from your computer.

Connect to it (the network password is raspberry, unless you changed it in the hostapd.conf file). Then try to SSH it with:

ssh pi@192.138.0.1

Install Python3 & pip

You will need the Python3 interpreter (Python>=3.6) to run the PiCamera server & pip to install the PiCamera package.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install python3 python3-pip

This will update the package manager, upgrade the system libraries & install Python3 & pip.

Install the PiCamera package

Once you have pip you can install the picamera Python3 package:

pip3 install picamera

Note

We do not create an isolated environment in this case since the sole purpose of the PiZero will be to act as a responsive image server.

Camera serve Python code

To capture and serve the images from the PiCamera, we use this Python script:

To upload it to your PiZero, from a terminal:

wget https://gist.github.com/jlegrand62/c24e454922f0cf203d6f9ed49f95ecc1/raw/c4cda40ff56984188dca928693852f3f7a317fa4/picamera_server.py

Now (test) start the server with:

python3 picamera_server.py

Todo

Explain how to execute python3 picamera_server.py command at PiZero boot.