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
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)
