RASPISTILL
Getting creative with the Pi camera
Les Pounder shows us that the best camera software for the Raspberry Pi is already installed and ready to go!
Les Pounder
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance creative technologist. Les blogs about his discoveries at www.bigl.es.
YOU NEED
Any Raspberry Pi
Any Pi Camera
Raspberry Pi OS
A breadboard 2 x Male to Female wires
Code: https://github.com/lesp/LXF269-PiCamera-Bash/archive/master.zip
The Raspberry Pi Camera is great fun to play with, and in this tutorial we’re going to use the camera with a push button that will choose a random filter for the image. We’ll be using the Bash terminal as our programming language, which is a great way to introduce the powerful scripting language.
Hardware setup
The Raspberry Pi Camera now comes in many different variations, and they all connect to the camera port of the Raspberry Pi, located just behind the Ethernet/USB ports. Open the camera port by gently lifting the plastic lock upwards, then insert the ribbon connector with the blue tab facing the USB/Ethernet ports. Close the lock on the connector and give it a very gentle pull to make sure it’s in place.
Power up your Raspberry Pi and then go to Preferences>Raspberry Pi Configuration. Under the Interfaces tab click the Enable button for the Camera. Then click OK and reboot the Pi.