Libobscura: A friendly library to use cameras on Linux

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@dcz announced libobscura, a new library for interfacing with cameras here: https://dorotac.eu/posts/libobscura/

For those that want to see the code, it is written primarily in Rust: https://codeberg.org/libobscura/libobscura

What does “friendly” mean?

  • It’s hard to use it wrong. No segfaults. Errors guide you to the right track.
  • Point-and-shoot. If that’s all you need, you get a RGB buffer in ten lines of code.
  • It’s easy to add support for new devices. Great documentation and a good internal API are the goals.
  • It’s easy to contribute to. Send patches using the web interface, not a mailing list.

## Status

Because libobscura is only two months old as a funded project, the current status is “proof of concept”.

[…]

But there are still goals to achieve:

[…]

Yes, Dorota also worked on libcamera, however, they are excited about libobscura being a better solution for everyone.

There is a lot more in the blog post so please give it a read!

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And it will be GPU-accelerated processing. :ok_hand: Sounds great, thanks for linking.

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Between Xmas and Silvester German hackers club “Chaos Computer Club” (CCC) is going to continue it’s traditional Chaos Communication Congress #38 (38C3).

This year @dcz is going to hold a talk about Linux camera APIs / stacks.

Usually the curated talks can be viewed via live stream or later the recordings can be found at

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I will definitely tune in or check the recording, been following the API progress for a while.

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I will be donating in January to help your efforts @dcz

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This reminds me that after new year’s were going to have to open a new thread for the next annual photography showcase (as we had a year ago).

So, anyone interested still has a week to get a publishable photo with L5 from this year!

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I love photography, so I can definitely get in on this!

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Video available:

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And, to be clear, this is @dcz (Dorota Czaplejewicz) who was a contract employee for Purism who worked on the Librem 5. I haven’t watched the video … but I am curious about the need for a separate library (libobscura) from libcamera.

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The first link in the first post of this thread is to a text oriented web page with a straightforward rationale.

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Gnu-on-mobile

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Gnu-on-mobile

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Dorota created a new post on their website about DMABUF and video.

This is the first in an expected series of in-depth articles about their last period of work to share knowledge and hopefully build interest in this project.

https://fosstodon.org/@dcz/114850071423692372

Katzenmann:

Does this mean Libobscura is dead?

Dorota:

More like dormant?

It’s still a good idea IMO, there just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of interest (and no wonder, it’s missing some crucial features), and I’m busy with something else.

I’ll be publishing more in-depth articles about the last period of work, and maybe that makes people more interested again.

If anyone has any interest in this project, Dorota seemed open to answering any questions, even if you don’t know anything about cameras and cameras on Linux.

Katzenmann:

Hmm. I would be interested and I do know Rust. The thing is I know [jack] (language modified to be PG) removed about cameras and cameras on Linux and it seems like a very hard topic to get into

Dorota:

Shoot me any questions you have. It may be challenging at first because libobscura has a couple of experiments at first, but there are open issues to try.

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Big shame. If dorota doesnt believe in own project, then who else would?

Its better to be honest and say that dorota abandoned the project than to say that it was of no interest to the community. So unprofessional.

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I disagree. She said “dormant” and not “abandoned”. She didn’t say there was “no interest” … she said that there “doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of interest” (which can be judged by contributions and clones). Also she said she was busy with something else. And she said she would be publishing articles to stimulate interest. The fact is that people need money. If she has a paid gig that temporarily occupies all of her time, a dormancy of a (non-paid?) project for a few months doesn’t seem at all unprofessional to me.

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I agreed…

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