Install OpenCV on Raspberry Pi Zero W

Illustration 1: Raspberry Pi Zero W

In this post I want to show you how to install OpenCV 3.2.0 on you Raspberry Pi Zero W.

Attention:

• Installing OpenCV on your Raspberry Pi Zero W takes more than 9h. So I recommend to do this over night

Preconditions:

• Make sure you installed Raspbian Jessie on your Raspberry Zero W

Installing OpenCV on your Raspberry Pi Zero W

1. Expand Filesystem

If your filesystem is not expanded, expand it by typing

$ sudo raspi-config 

in terminal and, choose the option "Expand Filesystem", enter with finish and restart your Pi.


2. Install dependencies

I will keep the description short for the following shell commands to keep the tutorial short. I think you want to start as soon as possible with OpenCV on your Raspberry Pi Zero W.

Execute the following shell commands:

//Update and upgrade your system$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

//Install dev-tools
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkg-config

//Download image I/O packages and install them
$ sudo apt-get install libjpeg-dev libtiff5-dev libjasper-dev libpng12-dev 

//Download video I/O packages for video processing
$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libv4l-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libxvidcore-dev libx264-dev 

//GTK dev library for OpenCV
$ sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev 

//Optimize packages for OpenCV
$ sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev gfortran 

//Install Python 2.7 header
$ sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev 

3. Download OpenCV 3.2.0

//Download OpenCV 3.2.0 from GitHub
$ cd ~
$ wget -O opencv.zip https://github.com/Itseez/opencv/archive/3.2.0.zip
$ unzip opencv.zip 

//Download "opencv_contrib" repo for OpenCV 3.2.0
$ wget -O opencv_contrib.zip https://github.com/Itseez/opencv_contrib/archive/3.2.0.zip
$ unzip opencv_contrib.zip

//Optional: Free some disk space and delete not needed zipped files
$ rm opencv.zip opencv_contrib.zip 

4. Setup Python for OpenCV

//Install Python package manager for OpenCV
$ wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
$ sudo python get-pip.py

//Download NumPy to build Python and OpenCV bindings
$ pip install numpy 

5. Compile and install OpenCV 3.2.0 for Raspberry Pi Zero W

//Setup build by using CMake
$ cd ~/opencv-3.2.0/
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE \
-D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local \
-D INSTALL_C_EXAMPLES=ON \
-D INSTALL_PYTHON_EXAMPLES=ON \
-D OPENCV_EXTRA_MODULES_PATH=~/opencv_contrib-3.2.0/modules \
-D BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON .. 

These command takes more than 9 hours because the hardware of the Raspberry Pi Zero W is slow. Moreover the Zero W will build OpenCV with only one core.

//Build OpenCV on Raspberry Pi Zero W
$ make

If OpenCV is 100% build without any error, you can install it on your Raspberry Pi Zero W quickly.

//Install OpenCV on Raspberry Pi Zero W
$ sudo make install
$ sudo ldconfig

Congratulation, OpenCV, you have successfully installed OpenCV on your Raspberry Pi Zero W!