cam
Interact with cameras via libcamera
TLDR
List available cameras
$ cam -l
List controls of a camera$ cam -c [camera_index] --list-controls
Capture frames to files$ cam -c [camera_index] --capture=[frames] --file
Display camera feed in a window$ cam -c [camera_index] --capture --sdl
SYNOPSIS
cam [options]
DESCRIPTION
cam is a command-line tool for interacting with cameras through the libcamera framework. It can list cameras, display their controls, capture frames, and show live video in a window.libcamera provides a modern camera stack for Linux, replacing older V4L2-only approaches with a more flexible architecture.
PARAMETERS
-l, --list
List available cameras-c, --camera index
Select camera by index--list-controls
Show camera controls--capture [frames]
Capture specified number of frames (0 for unlimited)--file
Write captured frames to files--sdl
Display video in SDL window--list-properties
Show camera properties--stream config
Configure stream parameters (e.g. width, height, pixelformat, role)--monitor
Monitor for camera hotplug and removal events
INSTALL
sudo apt install libcamera-tools
sudo dnf install libcamera-tools
sudo pacman -S libcamera-tools
sudo apk add libcamera-tools
CAVEATS
Requires libcamera support, which may not be available for all cameras. Some cameras work better with direct V4L2 access.
SEE ALSO
v4l2-ctl(1), rpicam-still(1), rpicam-vid(1)
