libcamera/libcamera.git - libcamera official repository

Age	Commit message (Expand)	Author
2020-05-16	libcamera: Move internal headers to include/libcamera/internal/	Laurent Pinchart
2020-03-19	libcamera: v4l2_videodevice: Make V4L2PixelFormat constructor explicit	Laurent Pinchart
2019-11-08	libcamera: Remove unneeded semicolons	Laurent Pinchart
2019-08-13	test: v4l2_device: Remove unused function	Kieran Bingham
2019-08-11	tests: v4l2_videodevice: Set media bus and pixel formats for vimc	Niklas Söderlund
2019-06-19	libcamera: Rename V4L2Device to V4L2VideoDevice	Jacopo Mondi

.. SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0 Using libcamera in a C++ application ==================================== This tutorial shows how to create a C++ application that uses libcamera to interface with a camera on a system, capture frames from it for 3 seconds, and write metadata about the frames to standard out. .. TODO: Check how much of the example code runs before camera start etc? Application skeleton -------------------- Most of the code in this tutorial runs in the ``int main()`` function with a separate global function to handle events. The two functions need to share data, which are stored in global variables for simplicity. A production-ready application would organize the various objects created in classes, and the event handler would be a class member function to provide context data without requiring global variables. Use the following code snippets as the initial application skeleton. It already lists all the necessary includes directives and instructs the compiler to use the libcamera namespace, which gives access to the libcamera defined names and types without the need of prefixing them. .. code:: cpp #include <iomanip> #include <iostream> #include <memory> #include <libcamera/libcamera.h> using namespace libcamera; int main() { // Code to follow return 0; } Camera Manager -------------- Every libcamera-based application needs an instance of a `CameraManager`_ that runs for the life of the application. When the Camera Manager starts, it enumerates all the cameras detected in the system. Behind the scenes, libcamera abstracts and manages the complex pipelines that kernel drivers expose through the `Linux Media Controller`_ and `Video for Linux`_ (V4L2) APIs, meaning that an application doesn’t need to handle device or driver specific details. .. _CameraManager: http://libcamera.org/api-html/classlibcamera_1_1CameraManager.html .. _Linux Media Controller: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/media/uapi/mediactl/media-controller-intro.html .. _Video for Linux: https://www.linuxtv.org/docs.php Before the ``int main()`` function, create a global shared pointer variable for the camera to support the event call back later: .. code:: cpp std::shared_ptr<Camera> camera; Create a Camera Manager instance at the beginning of the main function, and then start it. An application should only create a single Camera Manager instance. .. code:: cpp CameraManager *cm = new CameraManager(); cm->start(); During the application initialization, the Camera Manager is started to enumerate all the supported devices and create cameras that the application can interact with. Once the camera manager is started, we can use it to iterate the available cameras in the system: .. code:: cpp for (auto const &camera : cm->cameras()) std::cout << camera->id() << std::endl; Printing the camera id lists the machine-readable unique identifiers, so for example, the output on a Linux machine with a connected USB webcam is ``\_SB_.PCI0.XHC_.RHUB.HS08-8:1.0-5986:2115``. What libcamera considers a camera ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libcamera library considers any unique source of video frames, which usually correspond to a camera sensor, as a single camera device. Camera devices expose streams, which are obtained by processing data from the single image source and all share some basic properties such as the frame duration and the image exposure time, as they only depend by the image source configuration. Applications select one or multiple Camera devices they wish to operate on, and require frames from at least one of their Streams. Create and acquire a camera --------------------------- This example application uses a single camera (the first enumerated one) that the Camera Manager reports as available to applications. Camera devices are stored by the CameraManager in a list accessible by index, or can be retrieved by name through the ``CameraManager::get()`` function. The code below retrieves the name of the first available camera and gets the camera by name from the Camera Manager. .. code:: cpp std::string cameraId = cm->cameras()[0]->id(); camera = cm->get(cameraId); /* * Note that is equivalent to: * camera = cm->cameras()[0]; */ Once a camera has been selected an application needs to acquire an exclusive lock to it so no other application can use it. .. code:: cpp camera->acquire(); Configure the camera -------------------- Before the application can do anything with the camera, it needs to configure the image format and sizes of the streams it wants to capture frames from. Stream configurations are represented by instances of the ``StreamConfiguration`` class, which are grouped together in a ``CameraConfiguration`` object. Before an application can start setting its desired configuration, a ``CameraConfiguration`` instance needs to be generated from the ``Camera`` device using the ``Camera::generateConfiguration()`` function. The libcamera library uses the ``StreamRole`` enumeration to define predefined ways an application intends to use a camera. The ``Camera::generateConfiguration()`` function accepts a list of desired roles and generates a ``CameraConfiguration`` with the best stream parameters configuration for each of the requested roles. If the camera can handle the requested roles, it returns an initialized ``CameraConfiguration`` and a null pointer if it can't. It is possible for applications to generate an empty ``CameraConfiguration`` instance by not providing any role. The desired configuration will have to be filled-in manually and manually validated. In the example application, create a new configuration variable and use the ``Camera::generateConfiguration`` function to produce a ``CameraConfiguration`` for the single ``StreamRole::Viewfinder`` role. .. code:: cpp std::unique_ptr<CameraConfiguration> config = camera->generateConfiguration( { StreamRole::Viewfinder } ); The generated ``CameraConfiguration`` has a ``StreamConfiguration`` instance for each ``StreamRole`` the application requested. Each of these has a default size and format that the camera assigned, and a list of supported pixel formats and sizes. The code below accesses the first and only ``StreamConfiguration`` item in the ``CameraConfiguration`` and outputs its parameters to standard output. .. code:: cpp StreamConfiguration &streamConfig = config->at(0); std::cout << "Default viewfinder configuration is: " << streamConfig.toString() << std::endl; This is expected to output something like: ``Default viewfinder configuration is: 1280x720-MJPEG`` Change and validate the configuration ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ With an initialized ``CameraConfiguration``, an application can make changes to the parameters it contains, for example, to change the width and height, use the following code: .. code:: cpp streamConfig.size.width = 640; streamConfig.size.height = 480; If an application changes any parameters, it must validate the configuration before applying it to the camera using the ``CameraConfiguration::validate()`` function. If the new values are not supported by the ``Camera`` device, the validation process adjusts the parameters to what it considers to be the closest supported values. The ``validate`` method returns a `Status`_ which applications shall check to see if the Pipeline Handler adjusted the configuration. .. _Status: http://libcamera.org/api-html/classlibcamera_1_1CameraConfiguration.html#a64163f21db2fe1ce0a6af5a6f6847744 For example, the code above set the width and height to 640x480, but if the camera cannot produce an image that large, it might adjust the configuration to the supported size of 320x240 and return ``Adjusted`` as validation status result. If the configuration to validate cannot be adjusted to a set of supported values, the validation procedure fails and returns the ``Invalid`` status. For this example application, the code below prints the adjusted values to standard out. .. code:: cpp config->validate(); std::cout << "Validated viewfinder configuration is: " << streamConfig.toString() << std::endl; For example, the output might be something like ``Validated viewfinder configuration is: 320x240-MJPEG`` A validated ``CameraConfiguration`` can bet given to the ``Camera`` device to be applied to the system. .. code:: cpp camera->configure(config.get()); If an application doesn’t first validate the configuration before calling ``Camera::configure()``, there’s a chance that calling the function can fail, if the given configuration would have to be adjusted. Allocate FrameBuffers --------------------- An application needs to reserve the memory that libcamera can write incoming frames and data to, and that the application can then read. The libcamera library uses ``FrameBuffer`` instances to represent memory buffers allocated in memory. An application should reserve enough memory for the frame size the streams need based on the configured image sizes and formats. The libcamera library consumes buffers provided by applications as ``FrameBuffer`` instances, which makes libcamera a consumer of buffers exported by other devices (such as displays or video encoders), or allocated from an external allocator (such as ION on Android). In some situations, applications do not have any means to allocate or get hold of suitable buffers, for instance, when no other device is involved, or on Linux platforms that lack a centralized allocator. The ``FrameBufferAllocator`` class provides a buffer allocator an application can use in these situations. An application doesn’t have to use the default ``FrameBufferAllocator`` that libcamera provides. It can instead allocate memory manually and pass the buffers in ``Request``\s (read more about ``Request`` in `the frame capture section <#frame-capture>`_ of this guide). The example in this guide covers using the ``FrameBufferAllocator`` that libcamera provides. Using the libcamera ``FrameBufferAllocator`` ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Applications create a ``FrameBufferAllocator`` for a Camera and use it to allocate buffers for streams of a ``CameraConfiguration`` with the ``allocate()`` function. The list of allocated buffers can be retrieved using the ``Stream`` instance as the parameter of the ``FrameBufferAllocator::buffers()`` function. .. code:: cpp FrameBufferAllocator *allocator = new FrameBufferAllocator(camera); for (StreamConfiguration &cfg : *config) { int ret = allocator->allocate(cfg.stream()); if (ret < 0) { std::cerr << "Can't allocate buffers" << std::endl; return -ENOMEM; } unsigned int allocated = allocator->buffers(cfg.stream()).size(); std::cout << "Allocated " << allocated << " buffers for stream" << std::endl; } Frame Capture ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libcamera library implements a streaming model based on per-frame requests. For each frame an application wants to capture it must queue a request for it to the camera. With libcamera, a ``Request`` is at least one ``Stream`` associated with a ``FrameBuffer`` representing the memory location where frames have to be stored. First, by using the ``Stream`` instance associated to each ``StreamConfiguration``, retrieve the list of ``FrameBuffer``\s created for it using the frame allocator. Then create a vector of requests to be submitted to the camera. .. code:: cpp Stream *stream = streamConfig.stream(); const std::vector<std::unique_ptr<FrameBuffer>> &buffers = allocator->buffers(stream); std::vector<Request *> requests; Proceed to fill the request vector by creating ``Request`` instances from the camera device, and associate a buffer for each of them for the ``Stream``. .. code:: cpp for (unsigned int i = 0; i < buffers.size(); ++i) { Request *request = camera->createRequest(); if (!request) { std::cerr << "Can't create request" << std::endl; return -ENOMEM; } const std::unique_ptr<FrameBuffer> &buffer = buffers[i]; int ret = request->addBuffer(stream, buffer.get()); if (ret < 0) { std::cerr << "Can't set buffer for request" << std::endl; return ret; } requests.push_back(request); } .. TODO: Controls .. TODO: A request can also have controls or parameters that you can apply to the image. Event handling and callbacks ---------------------------- The libcamera library uses the concept of `signals and slots` (similar to `Qt Signals and Slots`_) to connect events with callbacks to handle them. .. _signals and slots: http://libcamera.org/api-html/classlibcamera_1_1Signal.html#details .. _Qt Signals and Slots: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/signalsandslots.html The ``Camera`` device emits two signals that applications can connect to in order to execute callbacks on frame completion events. The ``Camera::bufferCompleted`` signal notifies applications that a buffer with image data is available. Receiving notifications about the single buffer completion event allows applications to implement partial request completion support, and to inspect the buffer content before the request it is part of has fully completed. The ``Camera::requestCompleted`` signal notifies applications that a request has completed, which means all the buffers the request contains have now completed. Request completion notifications are always emitted in the same order as the requests have been queued to the camera. To receive the signals emission notifications, connect a slot function to the signal to handle it in the application code. .. code:: cpp camera->requestCompleted.connect(requestComplete); For this example application, only the ``Camera::requestCompleted`` signal gets handled and the matching ``requestComplete`` slot method outputs information about the FrameBuffer to standard output. This callback is typically where an application accesses the image data from the camera and does something with it. Signals operate in the libcamera ``CameraManager`` thread context, so it is important not to block the thread for a long time, as this blocks internal processing of the camera pipelines, and can affect realtime performance. Handle request completion events ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Create the ``requestComplete`` function by matching the slot signature: .. code:: cpp static void requestComplete(Request *request) { // Code to follow } Request completion events can be emitted for requests which have been canceled, for example, by unexpected application shutdown. To avoid an application processing invalid image data, it’s worth checking that the request has completed successfully. The list of request completion statuses is available in the `Request::Status`_ class enum documentation. .. _Request::Status: https://www.libcamera.org/api-html/classlibcamera_1_1Request.html#a2209ba8d51af8167b25f6e3e94d5c45b .. code:: cpp if (request->status() == Request::RequestCancelled) return; If the ``Request`` has completed successfully, applications can access the completed buffers using the ``Request::buffers()`` function, which returns a map of ``FrameBuffer`` instances associated with the ``Stream`` that produced the images. .. code:: cpp const std::map<Stream *, FrameBuffer *> &buffers = request->buffers(); Iterating through the map allows applications to inspect each completed buffer in this request, and access the metadata associated to each frame. The metadata buffer contains information such the capture status, a timestamp, and the bytes used, as described in the `FrameMetadata`_ documentation. .. _FrameMetaData: http://libcamera.org/api-html/structlibcamera_1_1FrameMetadata.html .. code:: cpp for (auto bufferPair : buffers) { FrameBuffer *buffer = bufferPair.second; const FrameMetadata &metadata = buffer->metadata(); } For this example application, inside the ``for`` loop from above, we ca print the Frame sequence number and details of the planes. .. code:: cpp std::cout << " seq: " << std::setw(6) << std::setfill('0') << metadata.sequence << " bytesused: "; unsigned int nplane = 0; for (const FrameMetadata::Plane &plane : metadata.planes) { std::cout << plane.bytesused; if (++nplane < metadata.planes.size()) std::cout << "/"; } std::cout << std::endl; The expected output shows each monotonically increasing frame sequence number and the bytes used by planes. .. code:: text seq: 000000 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000002 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000004 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000006 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000008 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000010 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000012 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000014 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000016 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000018 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000020 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000022 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000024 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000026 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000028 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000030 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000032 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000034 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000036 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000038 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000040 bytesused: 1843200 seq: 000042 bytesused: 1843200 A completed buffer contains of course image data which can be accessed through the per-plane dma-buf file descriptor transported by the ``FrameBuffer`` instance. An example of how to write image data to disk is available in the `BufferWriter class`_ which is a part of the ``cam`` utility application in the libcamera repository. .. _BufferWriter class: https://git.linuxtv.org/libcamera.git/tree/src/cam/buffer_writer.cpp With the handling of this request completed, it is possible to re-use the buffers by adding them to a new ``Request`` instance with their matching streams, and finally, queue the new capture request to the camera device: .. code:: cpp request = camera->createRequest(); if (!request) { std::cerr << "Can't create request" << std::endl; return; } for (auto it = buffers.begin(); it != buffers.end(); ++it) { Stream *stream = it->first; FrameBuffer *buffer = it->second; request->addBuffer(stream, buffer); } camera->queueRequest(request); Request queueing ---------------- The ``Camera`` device is now ready to receive frame capture requests and actually start delivering frames. In order to prepare for that, an application needs to first start the camera, and queue requests to it for them to be processed. In the main() function, just after having connected the ``Camera::requestCompleted`` signal to the callback handler, start the camera and queue all the previously created requests. .. code:: cpp camera->start(); for (Request *request : requests) camera->queueRequest(request); Start an event loop ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libcamera library needs an event loop to monitor and dispatch events generated by the video devices part of the capture pipeline. libcamera provides its own ``EventDispatcher`` class (inspired by the `Qt event system`_) to process and deliver events generated by ``EventNotifiers``. .. _Qt event system: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/eventsandfilters.html The libcamera library implements this by creating instances of the ``EventNotifier`` class, which models a file descriptor event source registered to an ``EventDispatcher``. Whenever the ``EventDispatcher`` detects an event on a notifier it is monitoring, it emits the notifier's ``EventNotifier::activated`` signal. The libcamera components connect to the notifiers' signals and emit application visible events, such as the ``Camera::bufferReady`` and ``Camera::requestCompleted`` signals. The code below retrieves a reference to the system-wide event dispatcher and for the a fixed duration of 3 seconds, processes all the events detected in the system. .. code:: cpp EventDispatcher *dispatcher = cm->eventDispatcher(); Timer timer; timer.start(3000); while (timer.isRunning()) dispatcher->processEvents(); Clean up and stop the application --------------------------------- The application is now finished with the camera and the resources the camera uses, so needs to do the following: - stop the camera - free the buffers in the FrameBufferAllocator and delete it - release the lock on the camera and reset the pointer to it - stop the camera manager .. code:: cpp camera->stop(); allocator->free(stream); delete allocator; camera->release(); camera.reset(); cm->stop(); return 0; Build and run instructions -------------------------- To build the application, use the `Meson build system`_ which is also the official build system of the libcamera library. Make sure both ``meson`` and ``libcamera`` are installed in your system. Please refer to your distribution documentation to install meson and install the most recent version of libcamera from the git repository at `Linux TV`_. You would also need to install the ``pkg-config`` tool to correctly identify the libcamera.so object install location in the system. .. _Meson build system: https://mesonbuild.com/ .. _Linux TV: https://git.linuxtv.org/libcamera.git/ Dependencies ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The test application presented here depends on the libcamera library to be available in a path that meson can identify. The libcamera install procedure performed using the ``ninja install`` command may by default deploy the libcamera components in the ``/usr/local/lib`` path, or a package manager may install it to ``/usr/lib`` depending on your distribution. If meson is unable to find the location of the libcamera installation, you may need to instruct meson to look into a specific path when searching for ``libcamera.so`` by setting the ``PKG_CONFIG_PATH`` environment variable to the right location. Adjust the following command to use the ``pkgconfig`` directory where libcamera has been installed in your system. .. code:: shell export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/ Verify that ``pkg-config`` can identify the ``camera`` library with .. code:: shell $ pkg-config --libs --cflags camera -I/usr/local/include/libcamera -L/usr/local/lib -lcamera ``meson`` can alternatively use ``cmake`` to locate packages, please refer to the ``meson`` documentation if you prefer to use it in place of ``pkgconfig`` Build file ~~~~~~~~~~ With the dependencies correctly identified, prepare a ``meson.build`` build file to be placed in the same directory where the application lives. You can name your application as you like, but be sure to update the following snippet accordingly. In this example, the application file has been named ``simple-cam.cpp``. .. code:: project('simple-cam', 'cpp') simpler_cam = executable('simple-cam', 'simple-cam.cpp', dependencies: dependency('camera', required : true)) The ``dependencies`` line instructs meson to ask ``pkgconfig`` (or ``cmake``) to locate the ``camera`` library, (libcamera without the lib prefix) which the test application will be dynamically linked against. With the build file in place, compile and run the application with: .. code:: shell $ meson build $ cd build $ ninja $ ./simple-cam It is possible to increase the library debug output by using environment variables which control the library log filtering system: .. code:: shell $ LIBCAMERA_LOG_LEVELS=0 ./simple-cam