Devon Bray's RasRig Streaming Setup Makes Great Use of Older Raspberry Pi Single-Board Computers

Modular camera setup for engineering streams includes a launch-day Raspberry Pi Model B, still going strong.

Gareth Halfacree
2 months ago β€’ Photos & Video / HW101 / 3D Printing

Engineer Devon Bray has put together a slick setup for live-streaming projects that combine software and hardware β€” and at the heart of it is a modular camera system running from Raspberry Pi single-board computers, including a launch-day Raspberry Pi Model B.

"Being able to capture the flow between the computer and the workbench is a critical requirement for engineering streams," Bray explains of his video streamin setup. "This necessitates having a bunch of different cameras in a bunch of different places throughout the work space. In my case, I wanted a cost-effective way to have at least three different simultaneous shots of the bench. After some experimentation, I found that mjpg-streamer running on a Raspberry Pi using a camera connected via the CSI [Camera Serial Interface] port can do a great job of getting video into OBS."

If you're looking to produce slick multi-camera video streams like this, you need a RasRig. (πŸ“Ή: Devon Bray)

The Raspberry Pi range of single-board computers remains a popular choice for video streaming work, thanks to a range of features including either dedicated hardware encoders or a fast enough processor for real-time software encoding in a low power envelope and the presence of at least one MIPI Camera Serial Interface input on most models β€” two for the Raspberry Pi 5 and many carrier boards for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, though none on the Raspberry Pi 400 and original-model. Add in the low cost for a model suitable for live streaming, and you've got a tempting base on which to build.

Bray's setup, which he calls the RasRig, sees multiple Raspberry Pi boards each with their own camera module deployed on a single network β€” making streaming and remote control simple. 3D-printed mounting plates support the standard Raspberry Pi Camera Module family, the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module with its interchangeable lenses, Omnivision OV5647 wide-angle camera modules, and one for C-mount microscope lenses for when you need to get up super close and personal.

"The hardware is designed to be able to easily switch out cameras/Pis with an emphasis on compatibility across different hardware generations," Bray explains. "[One is a] launch-day [Raspberry] Pi [Model B]. Still works great, can do 30 FPS [Frames Per Second] video over the network no problem."

A full walkthrough of the setup, including links to 3D print files, is available on Bray's website; the software, which uses Ansible to simplify setup and configuration of each Raspberry Pi in the rig, is available on GitHub under an unspecified license β€” with the caveat that it's only compatible with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and older, and requires the older Debian Buster version of Raspberry Pi OS. Additional information is available in Bray's Reddit post.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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