DSLR Controller - Raspberry Pi / Deb Linux

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DSLR Controller is a universal interface for clients to remotely control a variety of DSLR camera's over USB. This library relies on gphoto2 written by Jim Easterbrook (https://github.com/jim-easterbrook/python-gphoto2) and the libghoto2 binding.

Goals

• To allow clients written in any language to interface with a DSLR camera without need for any specific library
• Consistent messaging and triggers
• Universal system architecture through the use of docker
• MQTT messaging for continuous system status across various subscribers

Dependencies

• Docker
• Raspbian Stretch (ARM) or Debian Linux (x64)

Installation

sudo apt-get install docker

ENV Vars (optional)

You'll need access to the .env files. These can be built with the included encrypted files. Run the make_env_vars script and enter the vault password. This step is optional if you don't have the vault password. The env files merely contain mqtt creds and logging / sentry creds, but this stack can run without them.

bash make-env.sh
enter password:

Run the stack

bash start.sh

Testing

There are currently no automated tests but you can run the test_mqtt.py file to get a status or capture an image.

python test/test_mqtt.py capture

Usage

Relies on standard MQTT communications so whichever client you choose to interact with MQTT will work. You can send one of two commands below:

Topic	Command	Response
camera_comms/status/	status	Summary of the connected camera (if one is read)
camera_comms/	capture	A byte stream object of the photo.

**Still being developed

There is a way to preview the video stream using a virtual device as a loopback. This is still in development and will be added to the docker structure soon. It goes something like this:

# Install the loopback utils package so we can see the camera feed on a virtual device
sudo apt-get install v4l2loopback-utils

# Install VLC to view the stream
sudo apt-get install vlc

# Setup a vitrual device to send the stream to