How to light up picamera LED without taking photo

Question

I want to light up the picamera LED using python for a few seconds as a test to see if it works, without actually taking a photo. And yes I know I can test that by just taking a photo and watching it light up

I've read through the picamera documentation and can't seem to find a command to do it, any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You can turn on the camera led through the pi’s GPIO using the python code below:

 #!/usr/bin/env python
 import time
 import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

 # Use GPIO numbering
 GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
    
 # Set GPIO for camera LED
 # Use 5 for Model A/B and 32 for Model B+
 CAMLED = 5 
 
 # Set GPIO to output
 GPIO.setup(CAMLED, GPIO.OUT, initial=False)

 GPIO.output(CAMLED,True) # On
 time.sleep(1)
 GPIO.output(CAMLED,False) # Off

 But I believe that this may require you to first disable the red led by adding the following line:

disable_camera_led=1

To your config file which can be opened with the following command:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Answer 2

On a Pi Zero the GPIO pin is 40:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
CAMLED = 40
GPIO.setup(CAMLED, GPIO.OUT, initial=False)
GPIO.output(CAMLED,True)
time.sleep(1)
GPIO.output(CAMLED,False)