RPiCamera — Advanced interface for Raspberry Pi cameras (IMX585)

RPiCamera is a control and recording application for Raspberry Pi cameras, optimized for the IMX585 sensor and designed to work with a custom libcamera build (libcamera-imx585). The software provides a Pygame graphical interface, advanced camera parameter control via Picamera2/libcamera, and features useful for astrophotography (focusing assistance, histograms, live stacking support, etc.).

Requirements

Recommended OS: Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye or Bookworm), fully updated. Package names and availability may differ across distributions.

System packages (APT)

Run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
  python3 python3-pip python3-venv git ffmpeg \
  libatlas-base-dev libopenjp2-7 libtiff5-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev \
  libv4l-dev v4l-utils libcamera-dev libcamera-apps \
  gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad

Notes:

• libcamera-dev and libcamera-apps are required for Picamera2 and libcamera-based workflows.
• ffmpeg is useful for video encoding and post-processing.
• GStreamer plugins may be required for RTSP and advanced streaming setups.
• On Raspberry Pi it is often faster and more reliable to install heavy Python packages via apt (for example python3-astropy, python3-scipy, python3-opencv) to avoid long pip compilations.

Python dependencies (pip)

Minimal Python dependencies:

• pygame
• numpy
• matplotlib
• picamera2
• gpiozero
• pillow

Additional dependencies:

• astropy (used: astropy.stats.sigma_clipped_stats)
• scipy (used: scipy.ndimage)
• scikit-image (used: skimage.feature.peak_local_max)
• opencv-python (cv2), used by several scripts for image processing

Recommended pip install command:

pip install pygame numpy matplotlib picamera2 gpiozero pillow \
            astropy scipy scikit-image opencv-python

APT alternatives on Raspberry Pi OS:

sudo apt install -y python3-astropy python3-scipy python3-opencv python3-skimage

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Quick installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/remis-astr/Rpicamera.git
cd Rpicamera

2. Prepare the Python environment:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
# install dependencies (see Requirements section)
pip install -r requirements.txt  # if a requirements file is present

3. Install or prepare the IMX585 driver (if applicable):

• Follow the instructions in will12753/libcamera-imx585 to build and install the driver and configuration files.

4. Run the application (replace with actual entry script if different):

python RPiCamera2.py