Created by Ivan Sanchez Milara, last modified on Apr 10, 2018
In this tutorial I will explain how to stream a raspberry pi camera to a you tube live connection. The idea is to place the camera in a self-made birdhouse.
The tutorial and the idea is heavily influenced by the following tutorials:
- Infrared Bird Box: https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/infrared-bird-box/
- River Cam: http://www.instructables.com/id/River-Cam/
- Raspberry Pi Zero W
- Pi Cam v 2.1
- Raspberry Pi Zero Camera Cable
- External display, keyboard and mouse
- Mini HDMI cable
- 2A power source
- Download the operating system (raspbian). The latest raspian version from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/.
- Raspbian needs to be installed in a micro sd card. To that end, we
are using a software named Etcher that is
available for Windows, Linux and Mac. The process is as follows:
- Open Etcher and select from your hard drive the Raspberry
Pi
.imgor.zipfile you wish to write to the SD card. - Select the SD card you wish to write your image to.
- Review your selections and click 'Flash!' to begin writing data to the SD card.
- Open Etcher and select from your hard drive the Raspberry
Pi
- Move the SD card to the raspberry pi
- Connect the keyboard, mouse and screen to the PI.
Wireless connections can be made via the network icon at the right hand end of the menu bar. The icons on the right show whether a network is secured (has a lock) or not, and give an indication of its signal strength. If it is secure, when you press connect it will ask you for a password. You can edit all network settings (e.g. static ip address, and so on).
However, we want to use the raspberry pi zero from the command line instead of the Desktop UI. Hence, we need to follow a different approach. Configuration file for modern Ubuntu based systems (such as raspbian) is stored in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf. Open your terminal (the black icon at the top of the screen) and type the following command: (leafpad is the default text editor in raspbian).
sudo leafpad /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
This file is a text file in which we need to define the settings for the network we want to connect to. To do that, add a new network configuration at the bottom of the file. Template for this network configuration is as follows:
network={
ssid="My network"
}
Each line will contain a property with syntax *property_name *= property_value. The most important properties for you are:
- ssid: the name of the network. E.g. "panoulu"
- key_mgmt: The type of security this network uses. The most utilized ones are WPA-PSK (protected networks) or NONE (non password protected network)
- psk: if the network has a password the password should be written in this field.
Additional info: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md
TBD: How to have a ip address.
- Press the Raspberri Pi icon at the top left corner of the screen.
- In the menu select Preferences > Raspberri Pi configuration.
- In the System tab select *Boot *> *To CLI. *This settings will made that your Raspberry PI wil start in CLI (command line interface) mode next time it boots.
- In the interfaces tab enable *Camera * and SSH . This will allow you to connect the camera and access the Raspberry PI remotely using SSH protocol.
Connecting the camera to the Raspberry Pi. Please, remember that the Raspberry Pi Zero has a different cable that is sold separately. More info in this video:
In order to check that your camera is working execute the following command from your terminal. It will show a screen presenting the content of your camera.
raspivid -t 0
You can close the window by pressing CTRL-C.
Now you can reboot the Raspberry Pi. It will start in Command line mode.
In order to stream live video we need to use a streaming protocol. In this case we will use RMTP. This protocol is supportted by You Tube. We need a special URL (RMTP address) from You Tube that we can use to direct the footage captured by the Raspberry Pi’s camera to YouTube, thus streaming it.
To create the stream channel go to YouTube, sign in, and press the "Creator studio" that is accessible through a contextual menu from your user image(top right corner). This will open your main channel dashboard. Select *Live Streaming *> *Stream now *from the menu on the left.
Fill in the details you want for the live feed (below the video screen). This will be information about the subject of the feed, and a title, which you should add under Basic Info. Check the Stream Options and look for Encoder Setup. Then copy the Server URLand Stream name/key (you’ll need to click Reveal to see this). Note that the Stream key needs to be kept private — anyone with this information can stream to your YouTube channel!
More detailed description in this link: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/live-stream-youtube-raspberry-pi/
We can now start streaming. The problem is that
the raspivid application that is utilized to cast video from
raspberry pi does not encode the video with the right format for
streaming. We need to install ffmpeg library, that fortunately is
nowadays compile for the Raspberry Pi. Hence, first step is to
install ffmpeg library. From the command line write:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo apt-get update
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
Once the library is installed we can transform the video content from
the Raspberri Pi into a rmpt stream. We first capture the video with
the raspivid command. After that we reencode the video using the
ffmpeg. The command is as follows (it is very long):
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ raspivid -o - -t 0 -w 1280 -h 720 -fps 25 -b 4000000 -g 50 | ffmpeg -re -ar 44100 -ac 2 -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 2 -i /dev/zero -f h264 -i - -vcodec copy -acodec aac -ab 128k -g 50 -strict experimental -f flv rtmp://x.rtmp.youtube.com/live2/stream_name_key
where stream_name_key is the one you obtained from You Tube in the
previous step. You can see an explanation of the different parameters in
the following
link: https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/streaming-live-to-youtube-and-facebook-using-raspberry-pi-camera
You can store this command in a text file (e.g. streaming.txt). Since
you are in command line you can use nano editor.
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ nano streaming.txt
Once in *nano *just write the previous instruction and type *CTRL-O *and press *Enter *to save the file. Finally press CTRL-X to exit nano
Once it has been stored it can be executed using:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ bash streaming.txt
You might need to change the permissions of the file:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo chmod 744 streaming.txt
There are multiple ways of running a command when your service starts up:
https://www.dexterindustries.com/howto/run-a-program-on-your-raspberry-pi-at-startup/
Nowadays the best option is creating a service using systemd. Some
instructions on how to do that can be found
from https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/usage/systemd.md
We are creating a new service and run it at startup.
Create the following file using nano:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ nano streaming.service
Add the following information. After that press CTRL-O to save it
as streaming.service and CTRL-X to exit.
[Unit]
Description=Service that streams video to Youtube
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/pi/streaming.txt
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=pi
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Copy the file in /etc/systemd/system
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo cp streaming.service /etc/systemd/system/streaming.service
Next, let's test it that our service works correctly:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo systemctl start streaming service
We should see the image on the screen. Let's now stop it.
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo systemctl stop streaming service
When you are happy that this starts and stops your app, you can have it start automatically on reboot by using this command:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo systemctl enable streaming service
To check that it is working, let's restart the system:
pi@raspberrypi: ~ $ sudo shutdown -r now
The system should reboot and if everything is working normally, we should see again the video image on the screen.
Sometimes we need to access remotely the raspberry pi (see next section)
to modify some settings or fix some of the files. The raspberry pi can
be accessed via ssh using the ip address. However, if you are in a
network with dynamic IP address you need a way to retrieve that address
in order to know where to connect. In this case, we are building
a *Python *script that will check the ip address, and if it has changed
it will send the address via email. We are taking the code from the
following site: http://www.instructables.com/id/River-Cam/ .
This code do the following:
- Check the current ip address
- It stores the value of the ip address in a text file Address.txt
- Only if the current address is different than the ip address stored at the file *Address.txt *modifies it.
- If there is a change in the ip address, it send an email to a
predefined email:
[email protected]
# coding:utf-8
# Import smtplib to provide email functions
# Routine to check the external IP address and send an email if its changed.
import smtplib
import urllib
import socket
# Import the email modules
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
#Method to extract the ip address
def get_ip_address():
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
s.connect(("8.8.8.8", 80))
return s.getsockname()[0]
# Get the IP address
ipAddress = get_ip_address()
old_address = ""
filename = "/home/pi/Address.txt"
# Now check to see if it is same as last one recorded
try:
text_file = open(filename,"r")
old_address = text_file.read()
text_file.close()
except:
print "File read failure"
if ipAddress != old_address:
# Define email addresses to use
addr_to = ['[email protected]']
addr_from = '[email protected]'
# Define SMTP email server details
#smtp_server = 'smtp.gmail.com:587'
#smtp_user = 'your smtp login'
#smtp_pass = 'password'
smtp_server = 'smtp.utu.fi'
smtp_user = None
smtp_pass = None
# Create the body of the message (a plain-text ).
text = "Bird cam IP address is %s \nText and html." % ipAddress
# Construct email
msg = MIMEText(text, 'plain')
msg['To'] = ", ".join(addr_to)
msg['From'] = addr_from
msg['Subject'] = 'Automated Email From Bird cam - IP address Change'
# Send the message via an SMTP server
s = smtplib.SMTP(smtp_server)
#If it needs login and password
if smpt_user:
s.starttls()
s.login(smtp_user,smtp_pass)
s.sendmail(addr_from, addr_to, msg.as_string())
s.quit()
# Now write the new ip Address away
try:
text_file = open(filename, "w")
text_file.write(ipAddress)
text_file.close()
except:
print "File write failure"
The line you need to add to crontab is:
* * * * * python /home/ftp/storage/ipCheck.py
- https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/2018/how-to-boot-to-command-line-and-ssh-on-raspberry-pi
- SSH; change password