# waveform80/picamera

A pure Python interface to the Raspberry Pi camera module

Repository: https://github.com/waveform80/picamera
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/picamera
Homepage: https://picamera.readthedocs.io/
Language: Python
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: raspberry-pi, raspberry-pi-camera, python
Last push: 2022-12-24T22:48:19+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4726, "days_push": 1348, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1575, forks 345 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:05.971705+00:00)

## What it is
A pure Python interface to the Raspberry Pi camera module, supporting Python 2.7+ and 3.2+. It provides APIs for capturing still images and recording video from the Pi's camera hardware.

## Use cases
- capture still images from a Raspberry Pi camera in Python
- record video with the Raspberry Pi camera module
- build a time-lapse photography script on a Pi
- stream camera previews from a Raspberry Pi
- control camera settings like exposure and resolution programmatically

## When to choose
- you are using the legacy Raspberry Pi camera module (OV5647) with Python
- you want a pure Python API without writing C or using command-line tools
- you need fine-grained programmatic control over camera capture on a Pi

## When to avoid
- you are using the newer libcamera-based camera stack on Bullseye and later (use picamera2 instead)
- you need camera support on non-Raspberry-Pi hardware
- you require active development and new features, as the project is in maintenance mode

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: image-processing, video-processing, sdk
- domain: hardware, image-processing, iot
- platform: python
- tags: raspberry-pi, camera-module, picamera, hardware-interface, video, linux

## Member repositories
- waveform80/picamera (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:05.971705+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:57:36.969507+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/waveform80/picamera (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:05.971705+00:00, sha 8e787d32eb3b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.