Raspberry Pi Camera + mjpg-streamer systemd setup

README.md

This article includes setup instructions for the Raspberry Pi camera, but doesn't capture setting it up as a service (even though a few lines up it sets up OctoPrint as a service), and instead provides a pair of relatively-complex scripts to be run at startup via /etc/rc.local.

Setup

• copy webcam.sh to the mjpg-streamer directory (or wherever you'd like, just update the MJPG_DIR variable)
• copy pi-webcam.service to /etc/systemd/system/ (requires sudo), ensure ExecStart points to the correct path
• Register the service with sudo systemctl enable pi-webcam.service

pi-webcam.service

[Unit]
Description=Run Pi Camera as Webcam
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Environment="LC_ALL=C.UTF-8"
Environment="LANG=C.UTF-8"
Type=simple
User=pi
ExecStart=/home/pi/mjpg-streamer/webcam.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

webcam.sh

#!/bin/bash

MJPG_DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" &> /dev/null && pwd )/mjpg-streamer-experimental"

camera_options="-fps 5"
http_options="-p 5001"

start_cam() {
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$MJPG_DIR" "${MJPG_DIR}/mjpg_streamer" \
	    -i "input_raspicam.so ${camera_options}" \
	    -o "output_http.so -w ${MJPG_DIR}/www ${http_options}"
}

# According to
# https://community.octoprint.org/t/setting-up-octoprint-on-a-raspberry-pi-running-raspbian-or-raspberry-pi-os/2337
# this is necessary; it doesn't seem to be but it's harmless
vcgencmd version &> /dev/null

if [[ "$(vcgencmd get_camera)" = 'supported=1 detected=1'* ]]; then
  logger "webcam.sh: Starting Raspberry Pi camera"
  start_cam
else
  logger "webcam.sh: Raspberry Pi camera not found: $(vcgencmd get_camera)"
fi