Arch Linux

FerdiG

Member

Registered: 2022-11-02

Posts: 3

Gopro Hero8 as a webcam?

I've tried to use my Gopro Hero8 camera as a webcam by installing gopro-webcam from AUR. Running gopro webcam -a puts the camera into webcam mode correctly:

Discovered: enp7s0f3u2u4u1.                                                                                    
Using enp7s0f3u2u4u1 to discover the GOPRO_IP.                                                                 
Found 172.24.156.53                                                                                            
To control the GoPro, we need to contact another interface (GOPRO_IP ending with .51).. Adapting internally..  
Now using this GOPRO_IP internally: 172.24.156.51                                                              
{ "status": 2, "error": 0 }                                                                                    
{ "status": 2, "error": 0 }                                                                                    
Sucessfully started the GoPro Webcam mode. (The icon on the Camera should have changed)                        
Starting ffmpeg..        

This is also reflected by the output on the camera itsself which says "webcam".
According to the ffmpeg command the script starts, the video output should end up on /dev/video42:

root      232820  0.0  0.1 1113520 39196 pts/20  Sl+  14:11   0:00 ffmpeg -nostdin -threads 1 -i udp://@0.0.0.0:8554?overrun_nonfatal=1&fifo_size=50000000 -f:v mpegts -fflags nobuffer -vf format=yuv420p -f v4l2 /dev/video42

So far, so good. However, the Gopro device is not presented in either the Zoom client or Firefox. Also I'm unable to query /dev/video42 by running, say, vlc. I'm getting the following error:

vlc v4l2:///dev/video42                                                                                           
VLC media player 3.0.18 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2)
[000055be1bf0b550] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[00007f90dc001130] v4l2 demux error: not a video capture device

And shouldn't the camera also be accessible directly via the IP address? At least it listens on ports 80 and 8080. :-/

So, long story short: Has anybody ever used his Gopro successfully under Linux using this method? And if so, please share what I'm missing here ...