Full HD video streaming with a Raspberry Pi 2B

I was frustrated with the security nightmares of all the IP-webcams I tried, so I decided to build one myself. My usecase is purely indoor, the camera will only be used to observe the puppies of our bitch, when we are not in the same room - hence the creative name PupPiCam.

I don’t care for motion-detection or recording, but this could be done on another host, which has more power.

I will spare you with my failed ideas and attempts and document only the working solution. Also I will not explain how to physically mount the camera to the device.

The camera

You want to enable the legacy Raspicam camera stack, because it may perform better on Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi Zero devices, as it offloads more to the GPU.

I bought a Pi NoIR Camera V2, plugged it in an RPi4 and played around with it.

$ ffmpeg -f v4l2 -list_formats all -i /dev/video0
ffmpeg version 4.3.3-0+rpt2+deb11u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2021 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 10 (Raspbian 10.2.1-6+rpi1)
            ---8<--- snip out boring build-configuration info --->8---
  libavutil      56. 51.100 / 56. 51.100
  libavcodec     58. 91.100 / 58. 91.100
  libavformat    58. 45.100 / 58. 45.100
  libavdevice    58. 10.100 / 58. 10.100
  libavfilter     7. 85.100 /  7. 85.100
  libavresample   4.  0.  0 /  4.  0.  0
  libswscale      5.  7.100 /  5.  7.100
  libswresample   3.  7.100 /  3.  7.100
  libpostproc    55.  7.100 / 55.  7.100
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :     yuv420p :     Planar YUV 4:2:0 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :     yuyv422 :           YUYV 4:2:2 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :       rgb24 :     24-bit RGB 8-8-8 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Compressed:       mjpeg :            JFIF JPEG : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Compressed:        h264 :                H.264 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Compressed:       mjpeg :          Motion-JPEG : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       : Unsupported :           YVYU 4:2:2 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       : Unsupported :           VYUY 4:2:2 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :     uyvy422 :           UYVY 4:2:2 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :        nv12 :         Y/CbCr 4:2:0 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :       bgr24 :     24-bit BGR 8-8-8 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       :     yuv420p :     Planar YVU 4:2:0 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       : Unsupported :         Y/CrCb 4:2:0 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Raw       : Unsupported :  32-bit XBGR 8-8-8-8 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}
/dev/video0: Immediate exit requested

The interesting part is:

[video4linux2,v4l2 @ 0x1049cd0] Compressed:        h264 :                H.264 : {32-2592, 2}x{32-1944, 2}

the camera supports h264 output natively! This means, I don’t have to encode anything on the CPU to get a Full HD video! Finally I can do something useful with one of my old Raspberry Pis!

Increase the memory for the GPU

You have to increase the amount memory for the GPU. I did not get the camera working in Full HD with less than 256MiB memory for the GPU.

Unfortunatelly this means, I can’t use my first old Raspberry Pi 1 Mod. B, which was manufactured with only 256MiB of RAM, but had to try a later model (after Oct. 2012) with 512MiB. But because the feeble Pi1 with its single core, can either handle enough bandwidth for the camera or the ethernet interface (which is internally connected via USB).

That’s why I use my “new” Raspberry Pi 2 B.

The server

Now we need a server which provides the video-stream on the network.

Nginx supports rtmp:// with an additional module.

$ sudo apt install libnginx-mod-rtmp nginx ffmpeg

Just add this at the end of your /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

rtmp {
    server {
        listen 1935;
        chunk_size 1024;
        application webcam {
            live on;
            record off;
            exec_static /usr/bin/ffmpeg
                -f v4l2 
                -input_format h264
                -s 1920x1080
                -i /dev/video0
                -vcodec copy
                -f flv
                rtmp://localhost:1935/webcam;
        }
    }
}

Now give the user, which runs nginx the permissions to use the video-devices:

$ sudo adduser www-data video

and restart your nginx:

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

That’s it!

Run a video-player on your workstation/laptop, to enjoy the video:

$ mpv rtmp://<puppicam.my.local.network>/webcam

Because the video is quite noisy, my prefered way is to use ffplay with a denoise filter:

$ ffplay -vf atadenoise rtmp://<puppicam.my.local.network>/webcam

Yes, that’s the wrong dog, but he likes the whelping box (as long as there are no scary puppies inside).