camera-util 1.4.2

Python wrapper for USB, spin, Raspi, Jetson Nano cameras. Works on Windows, Raspian (incl Bullseye), JetsonNano, MacOS

A collection of threaded camera capture and streaming utilities.

Supports:

• USB and laptop internal webcams (OpenCV)

• RTSP/RTP network streams (GStreamer or FFmpeg fallback)

• MIPI CSI cameras (Raspberry Pi Picamera2/libcamera, Jetson Nano)

• Teledyne/FLIR Spinnaker cameras (PySpin)

• Basler cameras (pypylon)

Storage helpers for HDF5, TIFF, AVI, MKV.

Processing helpers for temporal filtering, background subtraction, and binning.

Full documentation (configs, backends, examples): README.md.

Install

pip install camera-util

Quickstart (OpenCV webcam)

import time
import cv2
from camera.capture.cv2capture import cv2Capture

configs = {
    "camera_res": (640, 480),
    "fps": 30,
    "fourcc": "MJPG",
    "displayfps": 30,
}

camera = cv2Capture(configs, 0)
camera.start()

window_name = "Camera"
cv2.namedWindow(window_name, cv2.WINDOW_AUTOSIZE)
last_display = time.perf_counter()
display_interval = 1.0 / configs["displayfps"]
stop = False
while cv2.getWindowProperty(window_name, cv2.WND_PROP_VISIBLE) >= 0 and not stop:
    frame = None
    if camera.buffer and camera.buffer.avail > 0:
        frame, _ts_ms = camera.buffer.pull(copy=False)
    elif camera.capture is not None:
        _ts_ms, frame = camera.capture.get(block=True, timeout=0.25)

    if frame is None:
        continue

    current_time = time.perf_counter()
    if (current_time - last_display) >= display_interval:
        frame_display = frame.copy()
        cv2.putText(frame_display, f"Capture FPS:{camera.measured_fps:.1f} [Hz]", (10, 20), cv2.FONT_HERSHEY_SIMPLEX, 0.5, (255,255,255), 1)
        cv2.imshow(window_name, frame_display)
        if cv2.waitKey(1) & 0xFF == ord("q"):
            stop = True
        last_display = current_time

camera.stop()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Raspberry Pi (Picamera2/libcamera)

Two wrappers are provided:

• piCamera2Capture (threaded, non-Qt)

• piCamera2CaptureQt (Qt5/Qt6)

Frame delivery model:

• Frames go into a single-producer/single-consumer ring buffer camera.buffer.

• Consumers poll (no queue semantics):

if camera.buffer and camera.buffer.avail > 0:
    frame, ts_ms = camera.buffer.pull(copy=False)

The Qt wrapper does not emit a per-frame signal; GUI code typically polls via a QTimer.