Mastodawn

**Stream video from Raspberry Pi Zero W camera in 2026**

TL;DR

I wanted to revive my old Raspberry Pi Zero W camera and stream it to Home Assistant.

I made it work via libcamera2 (mjpeg stream). If I compare it with ESP32 Cam, it’s resolution and fps is better, but it’s more complex to set it up.

Long story

RBPi camera used to work when I bought it (2018) – stream using uv4l, but now (in 2026) and with new version of Raspbian OS, it doesn’t.

Which streaming tools I’ve tried and didn’t manage to get them work:

Motion
Uv4l
mjpeg-streamer1
gstreamer

Libcamera2 and Python MJPEG streaming server

Lastly I’ve found libcamera2 python code2 (mjpeg_server2.py3)and it works. I can stream MJPEG stream to Home Assistant. The code:

#!/usr/bin/python3

# This is the same as mjpeg_server.py, but uses the h/w MJPEG encoder.

import io
import logging
import socketserver
from http import server
from threading import Condition

from picamera2 import Picamera2
from picamera2.encoders import MJPEGEncoder
from picamera2.outputs import FileOutput

PAGE = """\
<html>
<head>
<title>picamera2 MJPEG streaming demo</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Picamera2 MJPEG Streaming Demo</h1>
<img src="stream.mjpg" width="640" height="480" />
</body>
</html>
"""


class StreamingOutput(io.BufferedIOBase):
    def __init__(self):
        self.frame = None
        self.condition = Condition()

    def write(self, buf):
        with self.condition:
            self.frame = buf
            self.condition.notify_all()


class StreamingHandler(server.BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
    def do_GET(self):
        if self.path == '/':
            self.send_response(301)
            self.send_header('Location', '/index.html')
            self.end_headers()
        elif self.path == '/index.html':
            content = PAGE.encode('utf-8')
            self.send_response(200)
            self.send_header('Content-Type', 'text/html')
            self.send_header('Content-Length', len(content))
            self.end_headers()
            self.wfile.write(content)
        elif self.path == '/stream.mjpg':
            self.send_response(200)
            self.send_header('Age', 0)
            self.send_header('Cache-Control', 'no-cache, private')
            self.send_header('Pragma', 'no-cache')
            self.send_header('Content-Type', 'multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=FRAME')
            self.end_headers()
            try:
                while True:
                    with output.condition:
                        output.condition.wait()
                        frame = output.frame
                    self.wfile.write(b'--FRAME\r\n')
                    self.send_header('Content-Type', 'image/jpeg')
                    self.send_header('Content-Length', len(frame))
                    self.end_headers()
                    self.wfile.write(frame)
                    self.wfile.write(b'\r\n')
            except Exception as e:
                logging.warning(
                    'Removed streaming client %s: %s',
                    self.client_address, str(e))
        else:
            self.send_error(404)
            self.end_headers()


class StreamingServer(socketserver.ThreadingMixIn, server.HTTPServer):
    allow_reuse_address = True
    daemon_threads = True


picam2 = Picamera2()
picam2.video_configuration.controls.FrameRate = 5.0

picam2.configure(picam2.create_video_configuration(main={"size": (800, 600)}))
output = StreamingOutput()
picam2.start_recording(MJPEGEncoder(), FileOutput(output))

try:
    address = ('', 8000)
    server = StreamingServer(address, StreamingHandler)
    server.serve_forever()
finally:
    picam2.stop_recording()

Starting the program above with:

python mystreamer.py

Now I can finally see what is happening in my aquarium:

It works ok, but when my ssh connection closes, the python program terminates and it doesn’t stream anymore.

So I made it as a systemd service:

nano /etc/systemd/system/mystreamer.service

mystreamer.service looks like:

[Unit]
# Human readable name of the unit
Description=Python MJPEG web streamer
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=tomi
WorkingDirectory=/home/tomi/mymjpeg
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /home/tomi/mymjpeg/mystreamer.py

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
StartLimitIntervalSec=60
StartLimitBurst=3

Environment=PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal

CPUQuota=70%
MemoryMax=300M
Nice=10


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start the service:

sudo systemctl start mystreamer.service

Status?

sudo systemctl status mystreamer.service

See logs:

sudo journalctl -u mystreamer.service -f

Enable it (autostart at boot):

sudo systemctl enable mystreamer.service

Check if enabled:

systemctl is-enabled mystreamer.service

And finally, reboot and see if it starts:

sudo systemctl reboot

Then I modified .py code and made a mistake. Pi booted, but the service restarted every few seconds. I couldn’t even ssh to Pi.

What now?

I took SD card out of PI, put it in my computer, edited faulty .py code, put it back to RBPi, booted and I could SSH again.

Bottomline: streaming now works, but the poor PI’s CPU is at 100% (60% python streaming server, 30% glances). I found out I can set my python streamer service to CPUQuota=50% and still works ok.

Streaming H.264?

Raspberry Pi camera can also stream H.264 video, but I didn’t know how to integrate it in Home Assistant. It looks like the Camera integration doesn’t support it (it supports RTSP stream).

The command is:

libcamera-vid -t 0 --inline --listen -o tcp://0.0.0.0:8888

If anyone knows how to put this stream to HA, please let me know.

Footnotes

https://krystof.io/mjpg-streamer-on-a-raspberry-pi-zero-w-with-a-usb-webcam-streaming-setup/ ↩︎

https://github.com/raspberrypi/picamera2 ↩︎

https://github.com/raspberrypi/picamera2/blob/main/examples/mjpeg_server_2.py ↩︎

https://blog.rozman.info/stream-video-from-raspberry-pi-zero-w-camera-in-2026/ #Homeassistant #Libcamera #Raspberrypi