CHIP Linux Camera Example App

An example application showing the use of a CHIP Camera on the Linux platform. The document will describe how to build and run the CHIP Linux Camera Example on Linux.

• Building the Example Application

Building the Example Application

1. Prerequisites

Before building, you must install the necessary GStreamer, FFmpeg, curl libraries and development packages, which are used for video processing, streaming, recording and uploading.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-base \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
  gstreamer1.0-libav \
  libgstreamer1.0-dev \
  libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev \
  libavcodec-dev \
  libavformat-dev \
  libavutil-dev \
  libcurl4-openssl-dev

2. Building

1. Initialize the Build Environment This command configures your shell with the necessary build tools. You only need to run this once per terminal session.

source scripts/activate.sh

2. Build the Camera App (Device)

You can either build the applications for a local Linux machine or cross-compile them for a Raspberry Pi.

Option A: Build for a Local Linux (x86_64)

This is the simplest method for testing the camera pipeline on a single Linux computer.

# Navigate to the examples directory
cd examples/camera-app/

# Compile the Linux x86‑64 camera‑app target
./scripts/build/build_examples.py \
    --target linux-x64-camera \
    build

The resulting executable is placed in:

out/linux-x64-camera/chip-camera-app.

Option B: Cross-Compile for Raspberry Pi (arm64)

To run an application on a Raspberry Pi, you must cross-compile it from an x86_64 host machine. The recommended method is to use the provided Docker build environment to ensure all dependencies are correct.

1. Pull the Cross-Compilation Docker Image

docker pull ghcr.io/project-chip/chip-build-crosscompile:167

2. Run the Docker Container This command starts an interactive shell inside the container and mounts your local connectedhomeip repository into the container's /var/connectedhomeip directory.

docker run -it -v ~/connectedhomeip:/var/connectedhomeip ghcr.io/project-chip/chip-build-crosscompile:167 /bin/bash

3. Build Inside the Container From within the Docker container's shell, execute the build script.

cd /var/connectedhomeip

# Required to fix git repository ownership issues inside Docker
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/connectedhomeip
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/connectedhomeip/third_party/pigweed/repo

# Run the build script for the Raspberry Pi (arm64) target
./scripts/run_in_build_env.sh \
  "./scripts/build/build_examples.py \
    --target linux-arm64-camera-clang \
    build"

4. Transfer the Binary to the Raspberry Pi After the build completes, exit the Docker container. The compiled binary will be available on your host machine in the out/ directory. Use scp to copy it to your Raspberry Pi.

# The binary path on your host machine
# out/linux-arm64-camera-clang/chip-camera-app

# SCP command to transfer the file
scp ./out/linux-arm64-camera-clang/chip-camera-app ubuntu@<RASPBERRY_PI_IP_ADDRESS>:/home/ubuntu