Webcam Pi

An embedded Linux image that turns your Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and camera module into a plug-and-play USB webcam.

Table of Contents

1. Required Hardware
2. Supported Camera Sensors
3. Features
4. Installation
5. Setup
6. Usage
7. Building
8. Credits

Required Hardware

Part	Description
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W	Main compute module
Supported camera sensor	CSI-2 camera module
microSD card (≥100 MB)	System storage
micro-USB cable	USB-OTG data & power
Case (optional)	Protection & mounting

Supported Camera Sensors

• OV5647*
• IMX219*
• IMX708
• IMX477
• IMX500*
• IMX296*
• IMX290*
• IMX519*

*: Untested – only the IMX708 and IMX477 have been verified to work. Other sensors are included in the kernel and supported by libcamera, but your mileage may vary.

Features

• Fast boot: Less than 6 seconds to go from plugged in to functional.
• Running status: GPIO 23 goes HIGH whenever uvc-gadget is active.
• Streaming status: GPIO 24 goes HIGH whenever video is being streamed to host.
• Pause/resume: GPIO 26 freezes video on HIGH while keeping the stream alive.

Installation

1. Download the latest image from the Releases page.
2. Insert your microSD card into your host computer.
3. Flash the image:
   • Linux/macOS:

   # Replace /dev/sdX with your card device
   sudo dd if=webcampi-<version>.img of=/dev/sdX

   • Windows:

   Use a tool like Balena Etcher or Raspberry Pi Imager
   

Alternatively, if you already have a Linux image on a Pi that supports OTG you can skip Webcam Pi and just follow the generic UVC-gadget setup guide: uvc-gadget#installation

Setup

1. Insert the flashed microSD card into the Pi.
2. Connect the camera to the Pi’s camera port and secure the ribbon cable.
3. Plug a Micro-USB cable into the “USB” OTG port of the Pi and the other end into your host USB port.
4. On your host machine, a new video device should appear.

Usage

Once the gadget is running, any standard UVC-compatible tool can access it:

Any webcam-enabled app: Zoom, OBS, Discord, etc. just pick the Webcam Pi as your camera.

...or...

# List video devices
v4l2‐ctl --list-devices

# Stream with VLC
vlc v4l2:///dev/video0

# Record with ffmpeg
ffmpeg -f v4l2 -i /dev/video0 -t 00:00:10 output.mkv

Building

Prerequisites

• Linux host (WSL is fine)
• Git and buildroot dependencies

Clone

git clone --recursive https://github.com/elcalzado/webcampi.git
cd webcampi

Build

# This will configure Buildroot and compile the kernel, rootfs, and image
./build.sh

When complete, the final SD card image will be in:

buildroot/output/images/sdcard.img

Flash it as described in Installation.

Credits

• uvc-gadget: Fork of the main uvc-gadget with added GPIO functionality.
• showmewebcam: Inspiration for this project and learning resource.
• Buildroot