If you don’t have a Linux system around, boot the Raspberry Pi with a monitor and keyboard. This setup will work with any version of Raspbian Jessie or later.

Setting up Raspbian Lite is awkward with only a Pi Zero W because the wireless has to be configured. I use Raspbian Lite because the only thing we’re doing with this Pi is using it as a camera. It’s simpler to set up, doesn’t require a user’s code repository, and has documentation. Update: at this time I’ve started trying out uv4l (see the writeup below) and feel it may be better than using mjpg-streamer. The version of mjpg-streamer I use is the same one that Octoprint uses, so it comes from a specific github repository. Broadcom now has a V4L2 driver available for the Pi Camera but this version of mjpg-streamer has a direct camera driver. I use mjpg-streamer because I’ve gone through the code personally and it’s remarkably efficient. I spent quite some time trying to find software that would be fast and efficient.Īfter going through the usual Raspberry Pi documentation and StackOverflow and Google I finally went back to my preferred solution. Well, this article is about software so… Software Intro The final box will be a different color and have an aluminum faceplate. The box snaps together (even though there are screw holes just in case). I printed this rather ugly box to put it into because it’s an industrial application where it gets installed on a system and a rectangular box is the optimal shape.

Pi zero w camera setup