This library implements a simple ctypes wrapper around libuvc. It excludes support for conversion and decompression, if you are looking for this functionality see pyuvc by Pupil Labs. The primary use case for this library is to capture frames from a UVC device and redirect them somewhere else. Currently only linux is supported. All versions of python from 2.7 up should work, but only 3.4 and 3.6 have been tested.

libuvc

git clone https://github.com/ktossell/libuvc
cd libuvc
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make && sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

NOTE: the current version of libuvc has a bug that can potentially cause a hang when streaming is stopped. See Issue 16 and Pull Request 59 for explanations and potential fixes.

Temporary until published on PyPI

git clone https://github.com/arksine/uvclite
cd uvclite
python setup.py install

import uvclite

capturing = True
with uvclite.UVCContext() as context:
    device = context.find_device() # finds first device
    device.open()
    device.set_stream_format()  # sets default format (MJPEG, 640x480, 30fps)
    device.start_streaming()

    while capturing:
        frame = device.get_frame()
        print(frame.size)  # print size of frame in bytes
        # do something with frame.data, a bytearray referencing the actual bytes

    device.stop_streaming()
    device.close()

The examples in this reposity demonstrate basic usage of a UVC Camera capturing MJPEG frames at 640x480 30fps and displaying them on a flask server. These examples require that Flask be installed. The server code is credit to Miguel Grinberg (see Flask Video Streamer)

Copyright 2017 Eric Callahan

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.