How to Build a Cheap, High Quality, DIY Webcam

Introduction

Hey there, I figured I would write this short guide for people looking to get a nice webcam but either can’t find one in stock or can’t afford a high quality webcam due to inflated pricing. I originally wanted to buy a Logitech Streamcam but they’re currently very expensive and alternatives are completely out of stock as of writing.


Recently, Raspberry announced the HQ Camera accessory and the official lenses. So I decided that I could probably build a better webcam than the current offerings with the RPI and the HQ Cam.


Preface: I have tested this on Linux only. Most of this guide should work on other platforms and I have done my best to comment on where things are likely to go wrong. If anyone runs into any issues I’ll correct things ASAP.

Guide

What you’ll need

Hardware:

*I have not tested with a Raspberry Pi Zero but it should work. You might have more trouble doing the headless setup but everything else should be fine.

All together that comes to $130 USD which is significantly cheaper than many of the HQ Webcams I’ve seen, plus being a RPI it has much more utility.

Installation

First, you should make sure that you have a way to SSH into your Pi since this tutorial will be covering how to set up your Pi in a headless configuration (no display).

  1. Download the Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit) Lite image from here.
  2. Write the image to your micro SD card using a image writer utility like Etcher.
  3. Before removing the micro SD card from your computer, we’re going to set up the micro SD card so when you turn on your RPI, it will automatically connect to your network. To begin, navigate to the boot directory on your micro SD card and create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf and paste the following content:
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=<Insert 2 letter ISO 3166-1 country code here>

network={
 ssid="<Name of your wireless LAN>"
 psk="<Password for your wireless LAN>"
}

You can find your country’s ISO letters here but for the USA you can just use US. Then create a blank file called ssh.

Once you’ve saved the file you can go ahead and eject the micro SD card.

  1. Insert your micro SD card into the RPI’s micro SD card slot and connect the USB-C power supply to your RPI to boot it up.

From here you can SSH into your RPI using the following command if your on Linux or Mac:

ssh [email protected] and the default password is raspberry

When you ssh into your RPI you’ll be greeted with the following prompt:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Congrats! You now have a functional Raspberry Pi. Now we’ll move on to setting up our camera.

Camera Setup

Attach your lens to the camera following the directions here for how to attach your lens. Then attach the ribbon cable to the PI’s ribbon slot. Make sure that the blue part is facing the audio jack on the RPI 4!

We’ll begin by enabling the camera and changing the default password.

  1. Use sudo raspi-config where you’ll see this prompt:

  1. Select option 1 to change your password.

  2. After changing the default password, go to option 5 “Interfacing Options” and enable the camera.

  3. Once you’ve enabled the camera restart your RPI by disconnecting and reconnecting the power cable.

  4. SSH back into your RPI using your new password.

Now we can install python by running sudo apt install python3 python3-pip once those packages finish installing run the following command to install our needed python package:

pip3 install picamera

Download this file and run it using

python3 pi_camera.py

You can see if the camera works by going to http://raspberrypi.local:8000/.

Next we’ll focus on setting up the client side.

Client Setup

On the computer you want to use your webcam…

If you’re on Linux or Mac you can go ahead and set up v4l2loopback using the install section and start v4l2loopback using:

modprobe v4l2loopback

then run the following command to pipe your webcam to your dummy video device

ffmpeg -f mjpeg -i "http://raspberrypi.local:8000/stream.mjpg" -vf format=yuv420p -f v4l2 /dev/video0

if you’re on Windows you can use the tool IP Camera Adapter to grab the stream from the above url

You should then be able to add your webcam to any software that taps into your video devices! :smiley: :partying_face:

Conclusion

Hopefully this saves you some money. Let me know if there are any errors in this post and I will correct them ASAP.

Here’s a picture of my setup. I use it mainly to play Magic the Gathering over the internet:

10 Likes

Nice write up!
And a cool project! :slight_smile:

I’d edit the installation instructions to add a step either before or after 3 to enable ssh, as it’s disabled by default now

  1. Enable SSH by creating a blank file in the boot partition named “ssh” with no capitals, quotes or extensions

For headless setup, SSH can be enabled by placing a file named ssh , without any extension, onto the boot partition of the SD card from another computer. When the Pi boots, it looks for the ssh file. If it is found, SSH is enabled and the file is deleted. The content of the file does not matter; it could contain text, or nothing at all.

If you have loaded Raspberry Pi OS onto a blank SD card, you will have two partitions. The first one, which is the smaller one, is the boot partition. Place the file into this one.

this can be done either before or after the WPA supplicant, and before removing the newly burned image for the first time?

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I don’t remember doing this, but I just checked the official docs and you’re right thanks :smile:

As far as quality is concerned… How is it working out for you? Is it noticeably better than a standard webcam like a Logitech C920 or equivalent?

I don’t own that webcam so it’s hard to make a direct comparison. I think the camera looks more like on the right than on the left. It’s definitely really sharp but I can’t give you a quantified answer.

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Sweet. I’ll trust your judgement. Looks like it could be a viable option and a pretty cool project nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.

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