The following page will show how to build the drivers to run a USB webcam on Ubuntu 16.04 for ESPRESSObin to stream video output to your browser. A list of UVC-compliant devices can be found here.
Building Webcam driver
To build webcam drivers we need to select necessary options and modules in kernel configuration. Similarly to how we did in Ubuntu - initial network configuration, we will be manually selecting the configuration from menuconfig.
To launch make menuconfig to manually select the needed options:
espressobin@buildserver:~/kernel/4.4.8$ make menuconfig
Here we will select * the following in kernel menuconfig:
Device Drivers ---> <*> Multimedia Support ---> [*] Cameras/video grabbers support [*] Media USB Adapters ---> <*> USB Video Class (UVC)
After all these options have been selected, save your configuration and exit the menuconfig. Now we can make a new kernel image using our newly made .config file:
espressobin@buildserver:~/kernel/4.4.8$ make -j4
Now we need to transfer the new kernel images to a microSD card containing Ubuntu file system. Insert the SD card in your laptop (listed here as /dev/sdb1) and mount it (here we will mount it to /mnt/sdcard):
espressobin@buildserver:/$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdcard espressobin@buildserver:/$ cd /mnt/sdcard espressobin@buildserver:/mnt/sdcard$ sudo cp /home/espressobin/kernel/4.4.8/arch/arm64/boot/Image boot/ espressobin@buildserver:/mnt/sdcard$ sudo cp /home/espressobin/kernel/4.4.8/arch/arm64/boot/dts/marvell/armada-3720-community.dtb boot/
and boot from SD card as shown in Boot from removable storage - Ubuntu.
Configuring the Webcam
Once in Ubuntu 16.04 console, update and install necessary packages:
root@localhost:~# apt-get update root@localhost:~# sudo apt-get install build-essential libjpeg-dev imagemagick subversion libv4l-dev cmake git
Make a directory (we will name it simply webcam) where you will clone a repository containing the mjpg-streamer package:
root@localhost:~# mkdir webcam && cd webcam root@localhost:~/webcam# git clone https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer root@localhost:~/webcam# cd mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental root@localhost:/webcam/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental# make root@localhost:/webcam/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental# sudo make install
Finally, we make a script file, e.g stream.sh:
root@localhost:~# vi stream.sh
where we will run the webcam and stream the footage:
#!/bin/bash set -x #start Video Camera Streamer cd webcam/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental ./start.sh &
of course, make the script executable and run it with:
root@localhost:~# chmod +x stream.sh root@localhost:~# ./stream.sh
and your webcam footage should start streaming. Access the stream via web browser by typing http://ESPRESSObin_IP_address:8080/?action=stream in URL where ESPRESSObin_IP_address is the IP address of our bridged interface (bro in our case) as set up in Ubuntu - initial network configuration:
http://ESPRESSObin_IP_address:8080/?action=stream
If you want to modify characteristics of the stream such as resolution or framerate, there are options listed out in home/espressobin/webcam/mjpg-streamer/mjpg-streamer-experimental/start.sh.
For example, by default the start script will be executing line 30:
./mjpg_streamer -i "./input_uvc.so" -o "./output_http.so -w ./www"
If you want to specity the the resolution and frame rate, based on the example given further below in the script, you change the above line to:
./mjpg_streamer -i "./input_uvc.so -r 640x480 -f 60" -o "./output_http.so -w ./www"