CHIP Linux Camera Example App

CHIP Linux Camera Example App#

An example application showing the use of a CHIP Camera on the Linux platform. The document will describe how to build and run the CHIP Linux Camera Example on Linux.

Building the Example Application#

1. Prerequisites#

Before building, you must install the necessary GStreamer, FFmpeg, curl libraries and development packages, which are used for video processing, streaming, recording and uploading.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-base \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
  gstreamer1.0-libav \
  libgstreamer1.0-dev \
  libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev \
  libavcodec-dev \
  libavformat-dev \
  libavutil-dev \
  libcurl4-openssl-dev

2. Building#

  1. Initialize the Build Environment This command configures your shell with the necessary build tools. You only need to run this once per terminal session.

source scripts/activate.sh

  1. Build the Camera App (Device)

You can either build the applications for a local Linux machine or cross-compile them for a Raspberry Pi.

Option A: Build for a Local Linux (x86_64)

This is the simplest method for testing the camera pipeline on a single Linux computer.

# Navigate to the examples directory
cd examples/camera-app/

# Compile the Linux x86‑64 camera‑app target
./scripts/build/build_examples.py \
    --target linux-x64-camera \
    build

The resulting executable is placed in:

out/linux-x64-camera/chip-camera-app.

Option B: Cross-Compile for Raspberry Pi (arm64)

To run an application on a Raspberry Pi, you must cross-compile it from an x86_64 host machine. The recommended method is to use the provided Docker build environment to ensure all dependencies are correct.

  1. Pull the Cross-Compilation Docker Image

docker pull ghcr.io/project-chip/chip-build-crosscompile:174

  1. Run the Docker Container This command starts an interactive shell inside the container and mounts your local connectedhomeip repository into the container’s /var/connectedhomeip directory.

docker run -it -v ~/connectedhomeip:/var/connectedhomeip ghcr.io/project-chip/chip-build-crosscompile:174 /bin/bash

  1. Build Inside the Container From within the Docker container’s shell, execute the build script.

cd /var/connectedhomeip

# Required to fix git repository ownership issues inside Docker
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/connectedhomeip
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/connectedhomeip/third_party/pigweed/repo

# Run the build script for the Raspberry Pi (arm64) target
./scripts/run_in_build_env.sh \
  "./scripts/build/build_examples.py \
    --target linux-arm64-camera-clang \
    build"

  1. Transfer the Binary to the Raspberry Pi After the build completes, exit the Docker container. The compiled binary will be available on your host machine in the out/ directory. Use scp to copy it to your Raspberry Pi.

# The binary path on your host machine
# out/linux-arm64-camera-clang/chip-camera-app

# SCP command to transfer the file
scp ./out/linux-arm64-camera-clang/chip-camera-app ubuntu@<RASPBERRY_PI_IP_ADDRESS>:/home/ubuntu

  1. Add your user to the video group

sudo usermod -aG video $USER
# Then, either log out and log back in, or run the following for the current session:
newgrp video