Install OpenCV Python on Raspberry Pi 3
In this tutorial, I will show you how to install OpenCV Python on Raspberry Pi 3. We will be installing OpenCV realease 3.4.1 with Python 3 on latest Pi operating system, Raspbian Stretch. You can follow the video tutorial along with this post here.
Before starting the tutorial, I assume that you have Raspbian Stretch OS pre-installed on your Pi and you are able to access it either using SSH, Remote Desktop or conventional full-PC setup consisting monitor and keyboard. If you don’t have OS installed or aren’t able to access it, you can follow my previous post on headless setup of Raspberry Pi.
That being said, let’s get started to install OpenCV Python on Raspberry Pi.
Step 1: Make Pi up-to-date
Update existing packages.
sudo apt-get update
Upgrade existing Pi software.
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo rpi-update
Step 2: Install Dependencies
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkg-config sudo apt-get install libjpeg-dev libtiff5-dev libjasper-dev libpng12-dev sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libv4l-dev sudo apt-get install libxvidcore-dev libx264-dev sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev gfortran
Step 3: Setup Python 3 development tools
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-setuptools python3-dev
Step 4: Setup pip tool
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py sudo python3 get-pip.py
Step 5: Grab OpenCV 3.4.1 and OpenCV-contrib archives
cd ~ wget -O opencv.zip https://github.com/Itseez/opencv/archive/3.4.1.zip wget -O opencv_contrib.zip https://github.com/Itseez/opencv_contrib/archive/3.4.1.zip unzip opencv.zip unzip opencv_contrib.zip
Step 6: Install numpy
sudo pip3 install numpy
Step 7: Build OpenCV
cd ~/opencv-3.4.1/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE \
-D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
-D INSTALL_PYTHON_EXAMPLES=ON \
-D OPENCV_EXTRA_MODULES_PATH=~/opencv_contrib-3.4.1/modules \
-D ENABLE_PRECOMPILED_HEADERS=OFF \
-D BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON ..Step 8: Increase swap space
We are going to increase swap size from 100MB to 1024MB, to facilitate compilation of OpenCV on all four cores of Pi.
Open /etc/dphys-swapfile using nano editor. Change the value CONF_SWAPSIZE variable to 1024.
Save the edited file and activate the new swap space using the following commands to restart the service
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start
Step 9: Compile and Install OpenCV
We are going to compile OpenCV on all four cores. Issue the following command and compilation should succeed within 2 hours.
make -j4
All that is left is, installing OpenCV using the following commands.
sudo make install sudo ldconfig
Step 10: Test OpenCV Installation
Fire up the Python 3 interpreter on command line and run the following Python code.
import cv2 cv2.__version__
The python code should output ‘3.4.1’, which indicates that the installation is perfectly fine.
Remove the downloaded zip files to free up space
cd ~ rm -rf opencv.zip opencv_contrib.zip
Revert back the swap size to its original value of 100MB by editing the /etc/dphys-swapfile. And, restart the service by issuing commands.
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start
Congratulations for your OpenCV-Python installation on Raspberry Pi 3.
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