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!
# use pip to get the latest stable release
pip install pyfakewebcam
# use git to install the latest version
git clone https://github.com/jremmons/pyfakewebcam.git
cd pyfakewebcam
python setup.py install
# python
pip install numpy
# linux
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
When I run the examples/example.py script (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.
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 np
blue = 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