Working with a USB webcam

Cameras are image sensors. That said, analog cameras and motion film cameras record images on films. Digital cameras have digital sensors to capture the image and these are stored in electronic formats on various types of storage mediums. A subset of digital cameras is USB webcams. These webcams, as their name indicates, can be interfaced to a computer via USB, hence the name, USB webcam. In this section, we will learn about the interfacing of USB webcams with the Raspberry Pi and programming using shell scripts, Python 3, and OpenCV in detail.

Note

All these webcams work with Raspberry Pi boards. However, a few webcams may have issues. The https://elinux.org/RPi_USB_Webcams URL has a list of many webcams and details regarding compatibility.

All the programs in this book are tested with the RPi 4B and a Logitech C310 webcam. You can view its product page at https://www.logitech.com/en-in/product/hd-webcam-c310.

Attach the USB webcam to the RPi...