Picamera2 is the libcamera-based replacement for Picamera which was a Python interface to the Raspberry Pi's legacy camera stack. Picamera2 also presents an easy to use Python API.

You can find documentation here which should help you to get started.

There are also many examples in the examples folder of this repository, and some further Qt application examples in the apps folder.

Picamera2 is only supported on Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye (or later) images, both 32 and 64-bit. As of September 2022, Picamera2 is pre-installed on images downloaded from Raspberry Pi. It works on all Raspberry Pi boards right down to the Pi Zero, although performance in some areas may be worse on less powerful devices.

Picamera2 is not supported on:

• Images based on Buster or earlier releases.
• Raspberry Pi OS Legacy images.
• Bullseye (or later) images where the legacy camera stack has been re-enabled.

On Raspberry Pi OS images, Picamera2 is now installed with all the GUI (Qt and OpenGL) dependencies. On Raspberry Pi OS Lite, it is installed without the GUI dependencies, although preview images can still be displayed using DRM/KMS. If these users wish to use the additional X-Windows GUI features, they will need to run

sudo apt install -y python3-pyqt5 python3-opengl

(No changes are required to Picamera2 itself.)

apt is the recommended way of installing and updating Picamera2.

If Picamera2 is already installed, you can update it with sudo apt install -y python3-picamera2, or as part of a full system update (for example, sudo apt upgrade).

If Picamera2 is not already installed, then your image is presumably older and you should start with

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

If you have installed Picamera2 previously using pip, then you should also uninstall this (pip3 uninstall picamera2).

Thereafter, you can install Picamera2 with all the GUI (Qt and OpenGL) dependencies using

sudo apt install -y python3-picamera2

If you do not want the GUI dependencies, use

sudo apt install -y python3-picamera2 --no-install-recommends

This is no longer the recommended way to install Picamera2. However, if you want to do so you can use

sudo apt install -y python3-libcamera python3-kms++
sudo apt install -y python3-pyqt5 python3-prctl libatlas-base-dev ffmpeg python3-pip
pip3 install numpy --upgrade
pip3 install picamera2[gui]

which will install Picamera2 with all the GUI (Qt and OpenGL) dependencies. If you do not want these, please use

sudo apt install -y python3-libcamera python3-kms++
sudo apt install -y python3-prctl libatlas-base-dev ffmpeg libopenjp2-7 python3-pip
pip3 install numpy --upgrade
pip3 install picamera2

Please note that the "main" branch of this repository corresponds to the currently released version of Picamera2 so that the examples there can be referred to by users. Development for forthcoming releases happens on the "next" branch.

We are happy to receive pull requests (normally for the "next" branch) that will fix bugs, add features and generally improve the code. Pull requests should be:

• Restricted to one change or feature each. Please try to avoid "drive-by fixes" especially in a larger set of changes, as it can make them harder to review.
• The commit history should consist of a number of commits that are as easy to review as possible. In particular this means:
  • Where one commit is fixing errors in an earlier commit in the set, please simply merge them.
  • Where a commit is reverting a commit from earlier in the set, please remove the commit entirely.
  • Please avoid adding merge commits or any other unnecessary commits.
  • The commit message should have a short single line at the top which is nonetheless as descriptive as possible. After that we encourage more lines explaining in a little more detail exactly what has been done.
  • In general, we don't need to see all the trials, errors and bug-fixes that went into this change, we only want to understand how it works now!
  • Try to ensure that the automated tests are working after all the commits in the set. This avoids other developers going back to an arbitrary earlier commit and finding that things don't work. There can be occasions when other problems cause test failures beyond our control, so we'll just have to remain alert to these and work around them as best we can.
• Where changes are likely to be more involved, or may change public APIs, authors should start a discussion with us first so that we can agree a good way forward.
• Before submitting a pull request, please ensure that all the automated tests are passing. They can be run using the tools/run_tests script. Please use tools/run_tests --help for more information.
• Any documentation should be updated accordingly. New examples and tests should be included wherever possible. Also consider making an entry in the change log.
• The author of the pull request needs to agree that they are donating the work to this project and to Raspberry Pi Ltd., so that we can continue to distribute it as open source to all our users. To indicate your agreement to this, we would ask that you finish commit messages with a blank line followed by Signed-off-by: Your Name <your.email@your.domain>.
• We'd like to conform to the common Python PEP 8 coding style wherever possible. To facilitate this we would recommend using our pre-commit hook, which can be installed by doing the following in the root of the repository:

pip3 install pre-commit
pre-commit install

This will install flake8 in a venv and will perform linting of changes prior to committing.

Thank you!