Pi Camera on Raspberry Pi Zero

Installing the Pi Camera

Just plug in the ribbon cable as shown and you are all set.

You can purchase these cables in several sizes at Adafruit if you need longer lengths.

Take a peek at mine if you need a reference. Take it easy with the black peice that slides out to pinch the ribbon cable… I broke mine pretty easily and now have a Pi that won’t hold a ribbon cable reliably.

Interacting with Pi Camera

Since we’re using Python, we can use an awesome Python library called picamera. It provides a Python API to do all sorts of things with the camera. Check out the docs for great info and examples.

Note, I use Python 3.x for development these days. Python 2.7 should be left out to the pasture. That being said, I install python3-picamera here instead of python-picamera (which would also work if you need Python 2.x).

$ sudo apt-get install -y python3-picamera

Taking a Picture

Create a simple script.

import picamera

camera = picamera.PiCamera()

# I had my camera oriented in such a way that this made sense.
# ... change if if your picture is upside down.
camera.rotation = 180

camera.capture('/tmp/image.jpg')

After you run the script, download the image from the Pi to your computer.

# Run this on the computer you want to view the image on.
# Substitute 1.2.3.4 in for your Raspberry Pi's IP.
scp pi@1.2.3.4:/tmp/image.jpg .

Open image.jpg with your favorite image viewer.

Taking a Video

Create a simple script.

from time import sleep
import picamera

camera = picamera.PiCamera()
camera.rotation = 180
camera.start_recording('/tmp/video.h264')
# take a 20 second video
sleep(20)
camera.stop_recording()

After you run the script, download the video from the Pi to your computer.

# Run this on the computer you want to view the video on.
# Substitute 1.2.3.4 in for your Raspberry Pi's IP.
scp pi@1.2.3.4:/tmp/video.h264 .

This is raw video. You can open it with VLC or (most likely) your favorite media player. If all else fails, VLC does the trick!