UVC & Color Camera

This example demonstrates how to use the RGB camera on your OAK device as a UVC webcam. The UVC node allows you to use your OAK device as a regular webcam in applications like OpenCV’s cv2.VideoCapture(), native camera apps, and more.

Similar samples:

Setup

Please run the install script to download all required dependencies. Please note that this script must be ran from git context, so you have to download the depthai-python repository first and then run the script

git clone https://github.com/luxonis/depthai-python.git
cd depthai-python/examples
python3 install_requirements.py

For additional information, please follow installation guide

Code used for testing

import cv2

# Initialize the VideoCapture object to use the default camera (camera index 0 is webcam)
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(1)

# Check if the camera opened successfully
if not cap.isOpened():
    print("Error: Could not open camera.")
    exit()

# Loop to continuously get frames from the camera
while True:
    ret, frame = cap.read()

    if not ret:
        print("Error: Could not read frame.")
        break

    cv2.imshow('Video Feed', frame)

    if cv2.waitKey(1) & 0xFF == ord('q'):
        break

cap.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()

Source code

Python

Also available on GitHub

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#!/usr/bin/env python3

import time
import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('-fb', '--flash-bootloader', default=False, action="store_true")
parser.add_argument('-f',  '--flash-app',        default=False, action="store_true")
parser.add_argument('-l',  '--load-and-exit',    default=False, action="store_true")
args = parser.parse_args()

if args.load_and_exit:
    import os
    # Disabling device watchdog, so it doesn't need the host to ping periodically.
    # Note: this is done before importing `depthai`
    os.environ["DEPTHAI_WATCHDOG"] = "0"

import depthai as dai

def getPipeline():
    enable_4k = False  # Will downscale 4K -> 1080p

    pipeline = dai.Pipeline()

    # Define a source - color camera
    cam_rgb = pipeline.createColorCamera()
    cam_rgb.setBoardSocket(dai.CameraBoardSocket.CAM_A)
    cam_rgb.setInterleaved(False)
    #cam_rgb.initialControl.setManualFocus(130)

    if enable_4k:
        cam_rgb.setResolution(dai.ColorCameraProperties.SensorResolution.THE_4_K)
        cam_rgb.setIspScale(1, 2)
    else:
        cam_rgb.setResolution(dai.ColorCameraProperties.SensorResolution.THE_1080_P)

    # Create an UVC (USB Video Class) output node
    uvc = pipeline.createUVC()
    cam_rgb.video.link(uvc.input)

    # Note: if the pipeline is sent later to device (using startPipeline()),
    # it is important to pass the device config separately when creating the device
    config = dai.Device.Config()
    # config.board.uvc = dai.BoardConfig.UVC()  # enable default 1920x1080 NV12
    config.board.uvc = dai.BoardConfig.UVC(1920, 1080)
    config.board.uvc.frameType = dai.ImgFrame.Type.NV12
    # config.board.uvc.cameraName = "My Custom Cam"
    pipeline.setBoardConfig(config.board)

    return pipeline

# Will flash the bootloader if no pipeline is provided as argument
def flash(pipeline=None):
    (f, bl) = dai.DeviceBootloader.getFirstAvailableDevice()
    bootloader = dai.DeviceBootloader(bl, True)

    # Create a progress callback lambda
    progress = lambda p : print(f'Flashing progress: {p*100:.1f}%')

    startTime = time.monotonic()
    if pipeline is None:
        print("Flashing bootloader...")
        bootloader.flashBootloader(progress)
    else:
        print("Flashing application pipeline...")
        bootloader.flash(progress, pipeline)

    elapsedTime = round(time.monotonic() - startTime, 2)
    print("Done in", elapsedTime, "seconds")

if args.flash_bootloader or args.flash_app:
    if args.flash_bootloader: flash()
    if args.flash_app: flash(getPipeline())
    print("Flashing successful. Please power-cycle the device")
    quit()

if args.load_and_exit:
    device = dai.Device(getPipeline())
    print("\nDevice started. Attempting to force-terminate this process...")
    print("Open an UVC viewer to check the camera stream.")
    print("To reconnect with depthai, a device power-cycle may be required in some cases")
    # We do not want the device to be closed, so terminate the process uncleanly.
    # (TODO add depthai API to be able to cleanly exit without closing device)
    import signal
    os.kill(os.getpid(), signal.SIGTERM)

# Standard UVC load with depthai
with dai.Device(getPipeline()) as device:
    print("\nDevice started, please keep this process running")
    print("and open an UVC viewer to check the camera stream.")
    print("\nTo close: Ctrl+C")

    # Doing nothing here, just keeping the host feeding the watchdog
    while True:
        try:
            time.sleep(0.1)
        except KeyboardInterrupt:
            break

Got questions?

Head over to Discussion Forum for technical support or any other questions you might have.