jremmons/ pyfakewebcam
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GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 
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Description
A library for writing RGB frames to a fake webcam device on Linux!
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pyfakewebcam
An API for writing RGB frames to a fake webcam device on Linux!
Compatible with Python2.7 and Python3.x
Author: John Emmons Email: [email protected]
Disclaimer: I wrote this project when I was a university student. I now employed full time so I don't have time to keep things update or add new features :(. Please feel free to fork!
installation
# use pip to get the latest stable release pip install pyfakewebcamuse git to install the latest version
git clone https://github.com/jremmons/pyfakewebcam.git cd pyfakewebcam python setup.py install
dependencies
# python pip install numpylinux
apt-get install v4l2loopback-utils
linux (optional)
apt-get install python-opencv # 10x performance improvement if installed (see below) apt-get install ffmpeg # useful for debugging
performance
When I run the
examples/example.pyscript (640x360 resolution) on an Intel i7-3520M (2.9GHz, turbos to 3.6 GHz), the time to schedule a single frame is ~3 milliseconds (with opencv installed). You can use this library without installing opencv, but it is almost 10x slower; time to schedule a frame without opencv is ~26 milliseconds (RGB to YUV conversion done with numpy operations).
If your goal is to run at 30Hz (or slower) and ~26 milliseconds of delay is acceptable in your application, then opencv may not be necessary.
usage
Insert the v4l2loopback kernel module.
modprobe v4l2loopback devices=2 # will create two fake webcam devices
Example code.
# see red_blue.py in the examples dir import time import pyfakewebcam import numpy as npblue = np.zeros((480,640,3), dtype=np.uint8) blue[:,:,2] = 255
red = np.zeros((480,640,3), dtype=np.uint8) red[:,:,0] = 255
camera = pyfakewebcam.FakeWebcam('/dev/video1', 640, 480)
while True:
camera.schedule_frame(red) time.sleep(1/30.0) camera.schedule_frame(blue) time.sleep(1/30.0)
Run the following command to see the output of the fake webcam.
ffplay /dev/video1