Setting up your raspberry pi

The below steps will guide you through some basic settings to get your raspberry pi set up for working with pirecorder. Most users may not need to follow these steps, but they are shown for completeness.

Table of contents

1. Start up your raspberry pi
2. Update your raspberry pi
3. Enable and test the camera
4. Set the screen resolution
5. Setup python for working with the camera
6. Optional: Enable filesharing

Start up your raspberry pi

This guide presumes you have a raspberry pi with working version of Raspbian that is powered on with direct access (screen+keyboard+mouse) or VNC. SSH is also an option but then no direct view of the camera is possible and so is only recommended after initial setting up and calibration of the camera.

Update your raspberry pi

Make sure that your raspberry pi is fully up to date. Open a terminal window and enter:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get autoremove -y

Also make sure your firmware is fully up to date to get the latest drivers to work with the picamera

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

Enable and test the camera

To be able to use the camera we need to enable it in the configuration menu. Enter:

sudo raspi-config

go to 5 Interfacing options, then P1 Camera, and click yes. Alternatively you can go to the main menu and use the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool there. Now reboot your pi if you have already set up your raspberry pi camera. If not, turn of your raspberry pi and now connect one part of the ribbon cable to the camera and the other end to the raspberry pi by pulling up the edges of the plastic clip of the camera module port and sliding in the ribbon cable, making sure the cable is the right way around.

You can test the camera quickly by entering the command raspistill -t 0 -k in a terminal window. To exit again, press ctrl+c. If you get an error message, then double check the cable is properly connected to the raspberry pi and the camera and try restarting.

Set the screen resolution

For configuring and calibrating the camera and using the dynamic interfaces that come with pirecorder, a screen resolution of at least 800x600 is strongly recommended, and at least 1024x1024 is preferable.

The resolution can be set with raspi-config: option 7 Advanced options, then A5 Resolution. When changing the resolution a restart will be required.

Setup python for working with the camera

pirecorder uses Python, which comes pre-installed with Raspbian on any raspberry pi. However, we need to update some python development tools for the raspberry pi camera to work properly. To do this simply open a terminal window and enter:

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev build-essential libpq-dev

Optional: Enable filesharing

For easy transfering of files with your raspberry pi it may be good to enable filesharing. There are various ways to share files, depending on your system. I recommend to use netatalk:

sudo apt-get install netatalk -y

Add the home directory to be shared:

sudo nano /etc/netatalk/afp.conf

And add the following text to the bottom of the file

[Homes]
  basedir regex = /home

Now restart the service:

sudo systemctl restart netatalk