Background Remover

The Need

It's been good long while since Microsoft first released a Teams version for Linux and yet, one of Teams' coolest features doesn't exist in said Linux version: removable backgrounds. As someone who uses Linux for their daily driver, this annoys me.

Well, I'm an engineer, so of course, I found a solution.

Using OpenCV and a v4l2loopback device (basically a virtual webcam you can write data to), I threw together a Python application that takes your normal webcam input, removes and replaces the background, and outputs that to the created video device. Problem solved :)

Note, this will work anywhere WebCams are used, not just Teams

How to Use

Dependencies: - python >= 3.8 (3.10 is what's supported officially) - pip - v4l2loopback

Setup:

1. Configure v4l2loopback (may not be necessary):
   • Recommended something like this:

   export DEVICE_ARR=(`ls /sys/devices/virtual/video4linux | tr -d 'video'`); \
   sudo modprobe v4l2loopback \
       devices=1 exclusive_caps=1 video_nr=${DEVICE_ARR[1]} max_buffers=2 \
       card_label=v4l2lo
   

2. Install with pip install bgrm

Then, you can run:

• Run with python -m bgrm <options> (use --help to see all options)
• Example: python -m bgrm -b ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/ni-skyline-wallpaper.png -w 320 -H 240 -s 2.0

Build from Repo

You can also build the package yourself from source (or grab the latest version from the releases tab)

To do that you need the "poetry" build system.

Run poetry build and install the whl from the dist/ folder