camera-util

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.

Metadata

Release files for camera-util 1.4.2

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for camera-util 1.4.2
File	Size	Uploaded
camera_util-1.4.2.tar.gz	145.6 kB	Feb 25, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for camera-util 1.4.2
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
camera_util-1.4.2-py3-none-any.whl 186.4 kB Feb 25, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 332.0 kB

Release files / camera_util-1.4.2.tar.gz

Download URL	camera_util-1.4.2.tar.gz
Size	145.6 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`88491e1d4dcbf957b8869f187272ac680fb73368a0cadad5376c6bd7df53ec0b`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`1846109351c5dc7d3e130ca6dc8f15c0334bfc5e3ecf9d0ed6660aa58a01a447`
Upload date	Feb 25, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.10.12`

Release files / camera_util-1.4.2-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	camera_util-1.4.2-py3-none-any.whl
Size	186.4 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`b2812cc4d5b757eadea9020740a2fc20083c202764a9e45ed1f0f1211395eddf`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`04018ccc0639d57d76c4b45e1381e757984bd13be0bab436347f05d0a2792935`
Upload date	Feb 25, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.10.12`