DIY Smart Security Camera Python Project - Setting Up The RTSP Stream 

Yea it should be a lot of fun! I know you've been waiting for this one. Afterwards I'm planning to focus on these sort of projects that involve programming and circuits. My hope is to make content that's approachable for anyone, so not only will it help college students who are taking intro engineering classes, but also anyone at home who's interested in learning this stuff.

The process I showed will work for any camera that connects to a computer, such as USB webcams or the RPi camera. Most security cams such as the Wyze do support RTSP, but the exact steps to set it up will depend on the particular brand/model. Here's how to set it up on a Wyze Cam: support.wyze.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026245231-Wyze-Cam-RTSP

You're correct, the Pi Pico is in fact a microcontroller (MCU for short). But MCUs actually don't have an OS. They can only run a single program, typically a C program but the Pico also supports micro Python. I'm planning to do videos on MCUs in the future. To program the ESP32 Cam as an RTSP camera you can use this project: github.com/rzeldent/esp32cam-rtsp I suggest using PlatformIO for programming MCUs. As far as starting a YT channel goes, I'm guessing YT didn't notify you on the other comment where I answered this. So I'll copy n paste my reply here again. The only software you really need is OBS Studio for recording video and audio, and a video editing program. There's lots of different video editing programs and it really comes down to personal choice. I use Shotcut since I mainly use Linux, but KdenLive is also a good choice. DaVinci Resolve is also a very popular choice and it works on all the platforms, but the free version is limited in features so you'd probably want to purchase a license for that one. And of course Adobe Premier is a popular choice for Windows users. The first thing I'd do is decide on which video editor you want to use, then watch a bunch of tutorials on it. Do the same for OBS Studio. You'll also want to get a good quality microphone and webcam or mirrorless camera. After that you should be good to go! Just use the "create" button on the top right of YT to upload your videos. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll be happy to answer. I'm guessing you're planning to make electronics projects? Or what type of content do you plan on making?

Yes it will copy audio if the stream has audio. If you use my guide for setting up MediaMTX then you'll need to make sure your ffmpeg command includes audio. The command I provided in the written guide does not include audio since the RPi camera doesn't have mic. I'm planning to make another video on MediaMTX which will show how to do this for cameras that have a mic.

Thanks for the reply. I bought a few USB mics for the raspberry pi's. Hopefully they will still work.

​@@PhazerTechforget my question about the mic in the other video. I just saw i have to find the code to record audio. Will let you know how it goes.

​@@cjlowe1650 First make sure you go into dietpi-config and enable audio. Now you'll need to include audio into the ffmpeg command. The command will be something like this: ffmpeg -f alsa -i plughw:1,0 -input_format h264 -video_size 1280x720 -framerate 30 -i /dev/video0 -c:v copy -c:a libopus -b:a 128k -r 30 -f rtsp rtsp://localhost:8554/StreamName -rtsp_transport tcp Notice there are several new options compared to the code on my website. "plughw:1,0" is the mapping to my particular audio device, chances are yours might be different mapping. Check out this link to determine what your plughw mapping will be: superuser.com/questions/53957/what-do-alsa-devices-like-hw0-0-mean-how-do-i-figure-out-which-to-use The '-c:a libopus' part is the codec. There are a large number of audio encoders that can be used, so if you have problems with libopus you can try aac or another codec. '-b:a 128k' sets the audio bitrate to 128k.

Which camera are you using?

@@PhazerTech Raspberry pi camera V2.1

@@atomicbuilds7579 And you already installed v4l-utils and ffmpeg, correct? What does the output of this command show? v4l2-ctl --list-devices

@PhazerTech its shows a list of devices including /dev/video0 there also has the h264 format if i use v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --list-formats

@@atomicbuilds7579 Are you using DietPi or the vanilla RPi OS? I found this thread that appears to have your exact same issue: forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=328574

I know! I'm planning to at some point.