Nothing new in base software today, so had some time to put up a quick hack for using the camera on the phone itself, via the local web browser. Slow, and still cannot see what you are taking a picture of, until you hit the URL
using tmux, run an INSECURE local python http.server with cgi in one session:
python3 -m http.server --cgi
then in a cgi-bin directory execute the shell scripts to execute commands (again using my fire tablet to take picture of the phone). Got to http://127.0.0.1:8000/cgi-bin/testpic
Note: this is all local to system, as the documentation says: Not For Production
especially if you have data enabled. Once the camera app is working, will be unnecessary. Also, have noticed sometimes the python server will get “stuck”, and need to go back to the tmux session and hit CTRL-C a couple of times to “unstick”. Is a linux machine, so assume one could install a “real” http server.
Added side effect (**insecure**), you can see and take pictures from your laptop, if you are on the same network, change 127.0.0.1 to whatever ip the phone is on.
the cgi-bin/testpic script (or whatever you called it) looks something like this
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import subprocess
from datetime import datetime
cmd='/home/phablet/bin/preview >> /tmp/pic.log 2>>/tmp/pic.err'
subprocess.call([cmd], shell=True)
print("Content-type: text/html")
print("")
print("""<html><body>
<h1>PinePhone</h1>
<a href="/Pictures">Pictures</a>
<br />
<hr />
<br />
<a href="/">Root</a>
<br />
<hr />
<br />
<center>
<img src='/Pictures/preview.jpg' >
<br />
<form action="/cgi-bin/pictest">
<button type="submit" style="font-size : 20px; width: 100%; height: 50px;">pictest</button>
</form>
<br />
""")
timenow = datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
print(timenow,"</center></body></html>")
and the preview script, in the bin dir.
#!/bin/bash fname=$(date +"%Y%m%dT%H%M%S") media-ctl -d /dev/media1 --set-v4l2 '"ov5640 3-004c":0[fmt:UYVY2X8/320x240]' ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pixel_format yuv420p -s 320x240 -f video4linux2 -i /dev/video1 -vframes 1 ~/Pictures/$fname.jpg convert ~/Pictures/$fname.jpg -rotate 90 ~/Pictures/preview.jpg
before the script above will run, need to give permissions to read/write the camera
sudo chmod 777 /dev/media1 sudo chmod 777 /dev/video1
and as previously mentioned, need to update the ffmpeg libraries, and install the utilities
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/ffmpeg-4 sudo apt update sudo apt install ffmpeg sudo apt install v4l-utils sudo apt install imagemagick
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