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I just got my Camera Board and a Model A Raspberry Pi to use as a security camera for my house. I had been using Motion with a Logitech C170 USB camera on my Model B board and it worked great except for the quality. I was expecting the Raspberry Pi Camera Board to show up as /dev/video0 but when I run Motion I get an error:

Failed to open video device /dev/video0: No such file or directory

The camera works fine with raspistill -d. This has to work with Motion as it has to take videos/pictures when movement is detected and I have to be able to access it from work.

This question was no good for me as it never answered my question and I'm not using python.

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8 Answers 8

Reset to default
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You can access the camera board on /dev/video0 by running the command:

sudo modprobe bcm2835-v4l2

This will have to be run on every boot of the device. Or you can put modprobe bcm2835-v4l2 in /etc/rc.local to make it run on every boot automatically.

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    You can add the line to /etc/modules to get the kernel to insert the module on boot automatically. <code> echo "bcm2835-v4l2" | tee -a /etc/modules </code> Ensure you can run the command first <code> sudo modprobe bcm2835-v4l2 </code>
    – Drew Anderson
    Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 22:16
  • Note: it is an "L" not a "1" for bcm2835-v4l2.
    – Timothy L.J. Stewart
    Commented Jan 28, 2018 at 23:47
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    why does this work ? what's the magic behind it.
    – AK_
    Commented Feb 12, 2018 at 2:06
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    is there any rationale behind it not being enabled automatically on every boot? Any clue why raspi-config doesn't do that when you enable the cam?
    – dethSwatch
    Commented Sep 9, 2018 at 4:20
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to load the model after each reboot, use this setting

  1. sudo nano /etc/modules
  2. enter bcm2835-v4l2
  3. exist and save the fle
  4. sudo reboot
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The standard motion dosn't work with the RPI camera. There is a variant called motion-mmal in development which works with the RPI camera

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=44966&p=379561#p374790 is a forum chat on setting it up

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/665518/Raspberry-Pi-as-low-cost-HD-surveillance-camera this is a guide on using motion mmal to set up a security camera.

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    The standard motion works fine through v4l2 after loading module bcm2835-v4l2. Though probably not as good as with MMAL.
    – scai
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 18:41
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to get motion to work(out of the box) you can install the Userspace Video4Linux2

It will create the /dev/video0 device node correctly on the Raspberry Pi.

I have just followed the install instructions and not only does motion just work, the example(optional) motion.conf sets up the Pi as a streaming server so that you can access it remotely in a browser.

the developer is asking for donations, I am definitely going to contribute.

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    Some dead links.
    – nu everest
    Commented May 18, 2017 at 3:08
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(from https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/18214/12486)

You will be able to access to the raspi camera like other V4L2 device using :

sudo modprobe bcm2835-v4l2

uv4l --driver raspicam --auto-video_nr

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I had the same problem. I tried this, it set up /dev/video0 OK but it did not work with motion: http://www.linux-projects.org/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=16

But then found this blog which seems to work: http://rbnrpi.wordpress.com/project-list/setting-up-wireless-motion-detect-cam/

Note that the motion-mmal apparently only supports 3 resolutions right now: 352x288; 640x480 and 1024*576

Hope this helps.

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I had a similar problem.

Today it was working, the next day it died.

tried a couple of the stuff here and other procedures found on google.

I eventually fixed it by activating the I2C protocol in raspi confing.(didn't think that was the problem since from what i know the camera uses the CSI-2 protocol and I never tweaked with it)

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I used motionpie https://github.com/ccrisan/motionPie to turn it into a IP cam.

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