Can't install OpenCV on my Raspberry Pi

Question

I am an absolute noob at this since I started recently. I am installing OpenCV for Tensorflow for a project. How To Run TensorFlow Lite on Raspberry Pi for Object Detection is the video i am using. I have Bookworm installed, on a Raspberry Pi 5

pip3 install opencv-python==3.4.11.41 is the command that I am running, although I get this error:

           [end of output]
      
        note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
      error: legacy-install-failure
      
      × Encountered error while trying to install package.
      ╰─> numpy
      
      note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
      hint: See above for output from the failure.
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: subprocess-exited-with-error

× pip subprocess to install build dependencies did not run successfully.
│ exit code: 1
╰─> See above for output.

I have tried almost all the random solutions on the web, I have tried sudo apt-get, pip3, although nothing is working.

Answer 1

At a guess, as you don't specify, you are probably using Python 3.7.

opencv-python 3.4.11.41 doesn't provide wheels for Python 3.7, at most 3.6. As OpenCV will have a dependancy on NumPy, the versions are probably mismatched, leading to the numpy error during the install.

For such an old version of opencv-python either:

• use an older version of Python, or;
• compile from sources (which is hard)

A much better solution would be to use the latest version of opencv-python. That video is over four years old, and so the versions used are probably out-of-date, or no longer supported. Just use the latest (compatible) versions of the software.

So enter instead, without the version requirements:

pip3 install opencv-python

Further reading

• legacy-install-failure when trying to install opencv-python