How to Stream video from your Raspberry Pi and control GPIO

There are a plethora of different packages out there for streaming video. The one I found that is closest to real time is “mjpg_streamer” that does not mean its the best or that you cannot achieve better with another package, it just means this is the one that I got to work best so far.

To install follow the instructions here
http://www.tanzilli.com/video_streaming
If thats not enough info you can look here too
http://www.phillips321.co.uk/2012/11/05/raspberrypi-webcam-mjpg-stream-cctv/

The final command I used was a very low image size to give me about 10fps

mjpg_streamer -i "/usr/lib/input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -y -r 160x120 -f 10" -o "/usr/lib/output_http.so -p 8081 -w /home/pi/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer/www/" -b

From there you can http into your pi on its ip at yourpiip:8081 and you should see pages to stream your video. The tricky thing that is not mentioned on those pages is the last -w argument is for the webpages which if you follow the instructions you delete. You should save those pages or when connecting you will get a “404 not found” because you pointed mjpg_streamer to host pages that dont exist. I have the full path in my argument as you see.

From there gpio was a snap I used WebIOPi you can find the instructions here
https://code.google.com/p/webiopi/wiki/INSTALL
and yes you can have them both running at once (camera gpio) as long as they are on different ports.

I installed both as a service so my pi starts right up and streams video and opens its gpio. So I hooked up some lights and put them in front of the camera. Now I can toggle them on and off from anywhere in the world (since I forwarded the pages) and see them.

The webiopi wont let me drive since I have to turn on two gpio at the same time to go forward or back, but it will be good for testing. Next I’m moving on to making my own javascript gpio control then I can connect it to the chassis and drive it around !

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