Cearka Larue's Wearable Wireless Streaming Camera Packs a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
Built to work in a web browser, this wearable streaming system is impressively functional — and uses a custom Gumstix carrier board.
Streamer Cearka Larue has turned a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and a Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module into a low-latency wearable wireless camera — mounted, cleverly, on a cheap hat.
"I've been needing a solution for an HD camera that do 30 FPS [Frames Per Second] and stream wireless to PC using a streaming protocol (so no extra software is needed)," Larue explains, "[that is] low latency (about 100-200ms), lightweight enough to wear, low power enough to run off a small USB battery for hours."
"Commercial solutions for this particular issue was severely lacking, so I created my own using [Raspberry Pi]. The first four prototypes ran off of [Raspberry Pi Zero W] , but I was limited to 1280x720 [and] without an external antenna the signal was fairly lacking when I walked around with it."
The solution: A version built around the considerably more powerful Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4), a system-on-module based on the same system-on-chip that powers the popular Raspberry Pi 4 family of single-board computers.
Before the CM4 could be used in a wearable, though, it needed a carrier board. "[I] used a custom IO board I made on Gumstix that is stripped down to the bare minimum components needed," Larue explains, "in order for the device to have the smallest footprint possible."
The finished wearable uses Larue's custom carrier board with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 8GB with no on-board eMMC storage, USB Type-C to a battery pack for power, and a micro-SD card for storage, plus a Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module. The software is simply Raspberry Pi OS and UV4L, and the whole unit is sewn securely onto a cheap hat using 3D-printed mounts.
More details on the project, schematics and source code for which have not yet been publicly released, are available on Larue's Reddit post.