MMALSharp - C# wrapper to Broadcom's MMAL and API to the Raspberry Pi camera

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MMALSharp is a C# wrapper around the MMAL library designed by Broadcom. It exposes many elements of MMAL and in addition provides an easy to use, asynchronous API to the Raspberry Pi Camera Module. The library targets .NET Standard 2.0 and is compatible with Mono 5.4/.NET Core 2.0 or greater runtimes.

Installation

MMALSharp NuGet package:

PM> Install-Package MMALSharp

MMALSharp.FFmpeg NuGet package:

PM> Install-Package MMALSharp.FFmpeg

Pre-release builds can be found on MyGet:

Logging configuration

For v0.6, MMALSharp now uses Microsoft.Extensions.Logging.Abstractions to provide package agnostic logging. If you want to enable logging, you must provide the ILoggerFactory instance your client application is using. For .NET Core applications, this will typically be done during dependency injection configuration. For more information, please see here.

Below is an example on how to configure NLog in a .NET Core 3.0+ console app. Note: the ILoggerFactory instance should be set before carrying out any MMALSharp specific operations:

var loggerFactory = LoggerFactory.Create(builder =>
{

	builder                
	.ClearProviders()
	.SetMinimumLevel(LogLevel.Trace)                
	.AddNLog("NLog.config");
});

MMALLog.LoggerFactory = loggerFactory;

Also see here for full NLog integration instructions.

Basic Examples

Take a JPEG image using YUV420 encoding:

public void TakePicture()
{
    // Singleton initialized lazily. Reference once in your application.
    MMALCamera cam = MMALCamera.Instance;

    using (var imgCaptureHandler = new ImageStreamCaptureHandler("/home/pi/images/", "jpg"))        
    {            
        await cam.TakePicture(imgCaptureHandler, MMALEncoding.JPEG, MMALEncoding.I420);
    }
    
    // Cleanup disposes all unmanaged resources and unloads Broadcom library. To be called when no more processing is to be done
    // on the camera.
    cam.Cleanup();
}

Take a H.264 video using YUV420 encoding at 30 fps:

public void TakeVideo()
{
    // Singleton initialized lazily. Reference once in your application.
    MMALCamera cam = MMALCamera.Instance;

    using (var vidCaptureHandler = new VideoStreamCaptureHandler("/home/pi/videos/", "avi"))        
    {    
        var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(3));
                
        await cam.TakeVideo(vidCaptureHandler, cts.Token);
    }   

    // Cleanup disposes all unmanaged resources and unloads Broadcom library. To be called when no more processing is to be done
    // on the camera.
    cam.Cleanup();
}

Documentation

For full installation instructions for Mono and .NET Core, including configuration and examples - please visit the Wiki.

License

MIT license

Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Ian Auty

Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation

Contributors

I want to say a big thank you to those of you who have helped develop MMALSharp over the years, your contributions are most appreciated. In addition, I'd like to say thanks to Dave Jones @waveform80 for your work on picamera which gave me the inspiration to start this project.