Feature Request: GPIO LED when camera is in use

[pmottram]

Like most webcams, I'd like to have a LED that illuminates when the camera is recording video, and goes out once it is not.

Ideally a configurable GPIO pin - how easy is this?

[geerlingguy]

That's actually a great idea, not sure why I didn't even think of it. It doesn't seem impossible, but it would probably need to be part of the uvc-webcam project that this project sets up/clones.

[pmottram]

Looking a bit upstream suggests it is an option (-p) in the uvc-gadget package:

Usage: ./uvc-gadget [options]

Available options are
    -b value       Blink X times on startup (b/w 1 and 20 with led0 or GPIO pin if defined)
    -f device      Framebuffer device
    -h             Print this help screen and exit
    -l             Use onboard led0 for streaming status indication
    -n value       Number of Video buffers (b/w 2 and 32)
    -p value       GPIO pin number for streaming status indication
    -r value       Framerate for framebuffer (b/w 1 and 30)
    -u device      UVC Video Output device
    -v device      V4L2 Video Capture device
    -x             show fps information

[pmottram]

A little further digging leads to 'piwebcam' file being the source of the run command for the uvc-gadget, so I think I should be able to configure the options on the line:
sudo /home/pi/uvc-gadget/uvc-gadget -u /dev/video1 -v /dev/video0
to
sudo /home/pi/uvc-gadget/uvc-gadget -u /dev/video1 -v /dev/video0 -p 23

Now to go find myself a LED to test with....

[pmottram]

OK, so I repaced the uvc-gadet with the one from https://github.com/peterbay/uvc-gadget and then I could use the -p flag to enable the LED on a GPIO pin of my choice. I also added the -b flag so it blinks at me once it has booted up anbd is ready to go :)

Not sure of the differences to the version forked uvc-gadget, but it seems to run fine with my v2.1 camera module.

[geerlingguy]

Let's leave this issue open, just so if someone wants to dig in a little further and add a PR to document how to do it, or modify the uvc-gadget fork (or help make sure upstreams/downstreams get synced so it works) to make it work out of the box.

[pmottram]

I eventually stumbled across https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam/releases which is a super uptimised Pi webcam. Now got it up and running:

Posted the case stl here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4731152

[stale]

This issue has been marked 'stale' due to lack of recent activity. If there is no further activity, the issue will be closed in another 30 days. Thank you for your contribution!

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[stale]

This issue is no longer marked for closure.

[plj5003]

So I have a pimoroni blinkt (url below) sitting on top of my zero w cam (Thanks BTW! It's been rock solid for months!). What would I look for to assess the status of the camera (i.e being on or off?). I figure i'll just use their python lib to do all the led commands and look somewhere to see the on/off flag to set the leds like every 5 seconds or something. Thoughts?

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/blinkt

[wytr]

Did something similar but worked my way around over the serial port, lol.

would be great to be able to use the usb connection.

[plj5003]

just following up here - is there not a way to run a command to see if it's on or not?

[starbasessd]

Answer #2 shows how to test for a GPIO pin status (on/off-high/low) Is that what you are looking for?
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/53778/how-to-detect-state-of-gpio-pin-in-python

[plj5003]

sorry to see if the webcam is streaming / recording vs idle