Enable Raspi Camera in OSMC

Hello Everyone

I am new to OSMC, but must admit that from all the OS’es I have tried OSMC is by far the best, so I will be using this for a long time!

I am running Jarvis on RPi 3B.

The one thing I have been searching for is how to enable the camera module in OSMC? From my search I have found the raspivid is available from the CLI. However what I want to do is enable, disable and record streaming from within OSMC.

From my searching I have found TVheadend which has a recording function built in. Unfortunately this (from what I understand) is to record streaming TV in TVheadend.

I also read about being able to change menus in OSMC, which is apparently not that difficult to do.

What I would like to know if whether there is a program I can install in OSMC to enable, disable and record camera streaming?
If not I would like to know thoughts on adding a menu in OSMC to run the raspivid command in order to accomplish the above?

I must add that I am very very new to OSMC and from all the reading and searching am feeling quite lost and also stuck. So your help will be much appreciated.

Thanks
-MM

I think you want a raspicam addon for KODI as raspivid would be the program for osmc.
Osmc is the system. Kodi the mediacenter.
Not sure if there is such thing available but you could also add shortcuts with commandline commands to the kodi screen that call raspivid to do what you want to do.
Also I think there is a v4l implementation for raspivid that could work with tvheadend.

V4L for this should be enabled in our kernel

raspicam/raspivid is included in OSMC

Hi Everyone

Thanks so much for your replies and help!

After I made the post, I did some more searching and reading about v4l & video conferencing etc and came across vlvc (videolan video conference) plugin for windows and linux!

Windows Plugin: VideoLan VideoConference download | SourceForge.net
Debian Plugin: VideoLan VideoConference - Browse /vlvc_debian at SourceForge.net

The problem with the above plugins is that they are very old. (I downloaded both and gave the windows plugin a quick check on my laptop and it looks like it is working.)

My first question is: Has anyone on this forum used vlvc before?
The reason for my question is that I am trying to figure out the Linux plugin. The Linux plugin contain all the .so library files, but I am not sure if I should put these in a specific plugin folder under the vlc directory, or place all the plugin files into every plugin folder (i.e. bloating the directories unnecessarily)?

The other problem from reading the vlvc documentation is that it looks very much like it leans towards GUI only (which would make sense as it is video conferencing), which means it will need a desktop environment enabled?

I was thinking that if it turns out that vlvc will need a desktop for the GUI to work will it be possible say for e.g. to look at an add-on like “surveillance room” to see what it uses to do streaming and then do something similar with vlvc (i.e. let vlvc stream A/V without enabling a full desktop in Kodi)?

Also I have not yet had a look at v4l & tvheadend - been too busy with the vlvc, but will be looking at it shortly! Thanks @mcobit for pointing that out.

Any help or assistance regarding the vlvc plugin would be much appreciated.

-MM

This may be of some help: Documentation:VLC Modules Loading - VideoLAN Wiki

Hi Sam

Thanks for the reply! I will have a look at that.

Also, I forgot to add in my previous post that there is another URL for those reading this and that are interested in vlvc:

At the bottom of the listed directories there is a tarball which contains all the directories.
Just thought I’d mention! :slight_smile: