# pi5-camera-webui

Camera service for a Raspberry Pi 5: a live video feed served over a small web UI, with face
recognition planned as a later stage.

Developed on the machine it runs on (`pi5`), with Codex as the coding client — see [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md).

## Hardware

| | |
|---|---|
| Board | Raspberry Pi 5 Model B Rev 1.1 |
| OS | Debian 12 (bookworm), aarch64 |
| Camera | Pi camera module, connected to a CAM port |
| Host | `pi5`, `192.168.2.154` |

## ⚠ Current state: the camera is NOT detected

Nothing is built yet, and **the camera is not visible to the system**, so start here:

```console
$ rpicam-hello --list-cameras
No cameras available!
```

This is a *detection* problem, not a software one — the userland is already in place:

- `camera_auto_detect=1` is set in `/boot/firmware/config.txt` (the correct default; nothing to add)
- 12 `libcamera`/`rpicam` packages are installed
- **`dmesg` contains no camera probe lines at all** — no sensor (`imx*`, `ov5647`), no CFE

That last point is the diagnostic one. A camera that is seen but misconfigured still leaves probe
messages; **silence means the sensor is not being reached electrically.** So check the physical
connection before changing any config:

1. The Pi 5 has **two CAM/DISP connectors, and they are interchangeable in shape** — a camera in a
   DISP port looks correctly seated and will never appear.
2. Ribbon **orientation**: contacts face the correct side at both ends (the board end and the camera
   end are not the same way round).
3. The connector latch is fully seated at both ends.
4. The Pi 5 uses the **narrower 22-pin** connector — a 15-pin camera cable needs an adapter.

Power off before reseating. Re-check with:

```bash
rpicam-hello --list-cameras     # should list a sensor
dmesg | grep -iE 'imx|ov5647|cfe'
```

⚠ **Do not treat `/dev/video*` as evidence the camera works.** Those nodes exist on this Pi already
and belong to the video codec and ISP blocks — they are present with no camera attached at all.

`picamera2` is **not** installed yet (`import picamera2` fails); it is the expected capture library
once a sensor is detected.

## Planned stages

1. **Capture** — confirm a sensor, grab a still, establish resolution/format.
2. **Live feed** — MJPEG stream first (simplest thing that works in a browser); WebRTC later if
   latency demands it.
3. **Web UI** — single page showing the live feed, plus basic controls.
4. **Face recognition** — detection first, recognition after; run it on a downscaled frame, not the
   full stream.

Each stage should be usable on its own before the next begins.

## Development

The model endpoint and MCP gateway live on `halogen` and are reachable from this Pi by name.
Codex is installed and configured here; see [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) for how it is expected to work in
this repo.