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I'm doing a surveillance system project of multiple cameras on a Raspberry Pi with a recording function. Is it possible to record video from two or more cameras at the same time from a single Raspberry Pi board?

I bought a multiplexer from ivmech, but only one of the cameras can be switched on at a time.

Is there any solution for recording video simultaneously from either Raspberry Pi cameras or USB cameras? Any kind of help will be appreciated.

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  • If the OP is still interested in a solution, I too have been working on Home Sec project with my Pi2. I ran across this link earlier today. pyimagesearch.com/2016/01/18/…
    – Travis
    Nov 2, 2017 at 16:24
  • @Eddie hallo I'm trying to use the same board but I had no luck and found also a possible error on the board can u help me?
    – weirdgyn
    Jan 8, 2020 at 9:40

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Not realistically, no. The single camera limit on the Raspberry Pi isn't arbitrary; it's a hardware issue. As it is currently designed, the RPi is not capable of processing multiple video streams. That requires very specialized hardware, which usually takes the forms of multiple GPUs.

Edit: I thought I'd add a source

No it is not possible on the Raspberry Pi

Use two Pi's and the network maybe...

Gordon (Raspberry Pi Engineer)

(note added by me)

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=50142

Edit 2::

Is there any solution for recording video simultaneously from either raspberry pi cameras or USB cameras?

(emphasis mine)

I missed the part about USB cameras. Yes, you can process multiple cameras through a USB interface. The link in the comments is a good example of how to use openCV. I'd also recommend their own website's documentation

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  • The 3 has a dual core GPU. I'm a bit dubious about the general assertion here as well, although I agree it probably isn't very feasible on a Pi anyway.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Nov 2, 2016 at 17:37
  • @goldilocks: GPU cores are not the same thing as CPU cores...
    – Jacobm001
    Nov 2, 2016 at 17:41
  • Fair enough, but I still don't see why the OS would be limited in the manner you describe. If it is handling multiple streams from USB devices, I don't see why it could not alternate processing through the GPU...except of course that might lead to a latency and buffering issue that grows without bounds. So I guess having not tried this I'll take your word for it ;)
    – goldilocks ♦
    Nov 2, 2016 at 17:45
  • I do not require all of them streaming on one screen but at least one. I just want to record and save the videos on an external hard drive
    – Eddie
    Nov 2, 2016 at 17:47
  • @Eddie: that would involve the "processing" step that the RPi is incapable of doing.
    – Jacobm001
    Nov 2, 2016 at 17:48
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This can be done with https://www.kerberos.io/. However more than one camera is not supported by default, and you have to make some changes in the config file.

Also, it doesn't take video, but rather a series of pictures when motion is detected.

You can read more about it here: https://doc.kerberos.io/2.0/installation/Multi-camera/Raspbian

I have used Keberos.io with one camera and it works great for what I need it for.

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