BeagleBone - USB Camera - Say cheese

Overview

The BeagleBone Black takes a 'selfie'.
Add a low-cost USB camera to your BeagleBone Black and take photos in seconds.

What You Will Need

• BeagleBone Black
• BeagleBone expandable case Orange orBlack (recommended)
• AC adapter 5 Volts, 2 Amp (recommended)
• A USB Camera such as this one

NOTE: This tutorial is based on Angstrom-Linux.

STEP 1 - Install Cheese Image Capture Program

First we will install a popular capture program called "cheese".

Using SSH/putty or an open terminal window, enter this command:

opkg install cheese

STEP 2 - Install Your USB WebCam

Remove power to your BeagleBone, Install the USB camera and reboot your BeagleBone.

Verify that the camera is recognized.

ls /dev

The USB camera is usually installed as /dev/video0

STEP 3 - Start Cheese Program

You will need a graphical interface such a VNC to view the photos - unless you have a keyboard and monitor directly connected to the HDMI video port.

Type this command to start the photo capture program.

cheese

If you see a broken up image...you may have to change the resolution.

Edit->Preferences->Resolution of the cheese capture program to match your camera.

Start at a low resolution (320x240) and increase to the maximum supported by your particular camera.

STEP 4 - Take a photo

STEP 5

Cheese is a Gnome application, which stores your photos here:

cd ~/.gnome2/cheese/media

These file storage location settings are stored in GConf.
You can change the settings with the gconf-editor.

Cheese can take single photos, a sequence of photos or even short video.

You can alter the photos with a good selection of effects. Have Fun!

Hope you 'get the picture' of this simple tutorial. Thank you!