rpidashcam

Dashcam software designed to run on Raspberry Pi.

Requirements

• USB microphone or similar
• USB GPS module
• External storage
• Camera module (HQ camera prefered but should work with any other camera that is supported by raspios) I use Arducam B0241 (IMX477).
• 32 bit version of raspbian (until libcamera has a saner less bloated alternative to picamera2)
• For best performance use python 3.10 (3.10.4 is currently the newest).

720p

Tested with Raspberry Pi 3B+ and working fine. Audio is synced properly and running full FPS.

1080p

Works with Raspberry Pi 4. 1080p at 30 FPS.

Notes

You'll need ffmpeg installed.

Copy example config to /etc/raspberrydashcam/config.ini.

The following tuning was made in /boot/config.txt (not sure they're needed).

over_voltage=6
arm_freq=2000
gpu_freq=750

mmalobj.py from picamera needs to be changed. See this MR to see how to do it.

In gps module gpsjson object class we need to change to remove decode.

unpack method should look like this:

    def unpack(self, buf):
        "Unpack a JSON string"
        try:
            self.data = dictwrapper(json.loads(buf.strip()))
        except ValueError as e:
            raise json_error(buf, e.args[0])
        # Should be done for any other array-valued subobjects, too.
        # This particular logic can fire on SKY or RTCM2 objects.
        if hasattr(self.data, "satellites"):
            self.data.satellites = [dictwrapper(x)
                                    for x in self.data.satellites]

No other tweaks are necessary.

Example video