For a long time I wanted to set up a video stream of my hometown, but it was prohibitively expensive. Recently, I thought about that idea again, and realized that a lot has changed since the first time I had it.

I found online comments about Reolink cameras being a good choice for quite a low price, so I ordered a Reolink RLC-511W IP camera to test. This model is able to stream a 5MP video over WiFi, supports RTSP and costs only ~100 € (DE Amazon, US Amazon - affiliate links - As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.). It has a 4x optical zoom, IR for night mode, works on both 2.4 and 5 GHz, and can even be connected and powered over PoE instead of the provided power adapter.

Next, I wanted to see if the Raspberry Pi 4 (DE Amazon, US Amazon - affiliate links), which I had initially planned for another project, was strong enough to take the camera's RTSP stream and transfer it live (almost realtime) as a 1:1 copy to YouTube. It is normal for live streams on YouTube and most other platforms to have a lag of ~30 seconds, and with this setup I was able to achieve a live stream with ~15 seconds delay, while the load on the Raspberry Pi was only about 0.3.

First I installed ffmpeg, the standard tool in opensource video processing, and created a stream.sh file on the Pi, containing the following commands:

#! /bin/bash
STREAM_KEY="****-****-****-****-****" # YouTube Stream Key
CAMERA_USERNAME="test"
CAMERA_PASSWORD="test"
CAMERA_IP_ADDRESS="192.168.1.33"
RTSP_SOURCE="rtsp://$CAMERA_USERNAME:$CAMERA_PASSWORD@$CAMERA_IP_ADDRESS:554"
YOUTUBE_URL="rtmp://a.rtmp.youtube.com/live2" # Base YouTube RTMP URL
VBR="5200k" # Bitrate
USE_TCP=1 # Use TCP transport for RTSP, otherwise UDP
MUTE_AUDIO=0 # Discard audio from the camera

args=()
(( USE_TCP == 1 )) && args+=( '-rtsp_transport tcp' )
args+=( '-i' $RTSP_SOURCE )
(( MUTE_AUDIO == 1 )) && args+=( '-f lavfi -i anullsrc' )
args+=( '-b:v' $VBR )
args+=( '-tune zerolatency' )
args+=( '-preset veryfast' )
args+=( '-vcodec libx264' )
args+=( '-pix_fmt +' )
args+=( '-c:v copy' )
args+=( '-c:a aac' )
args+=( '-strict experimental' )
args+=( '-f flv' $YOUTUBE_URL/$STREAM_KEY )

echo "Starting ffmpeg ${args[@]}"
ffmpeg ${args[@]}

Make sure to update the variables to your specific camera and YouTube credentials and IP address of the camera.

Feel free to tune the ffmpeg command parameters, as it is one of the most flexible video processing tools, but these settings worked for me. The Raspberry Pi handles this easily.

This bash script takes the configuration, runs ffmpeg and tells it to connect to the camera, copy the stream without doing any video processing and output it to YouTube's RTMP endpoint.

Both the Raspberry Pi and the camera are connected to the network wirelessly, so the only cable the camera needs is for power.

You can watch the live stream here. Now I and everyone else can see what's happening in my hometown of Sombor, Serbia from anywhere in the world.

I used the time during this pandemic holiday season for my DIY home project. Ever since we moved into our new house there were hanging power cables on one of the kitchen walls, initially planned for a light. It is located near upper cabinets, so in order to be able to fully open them the light would have to be very thin. We had plenty of light sources in the kitchen already, so I got an idea of putting a smart home hub with display there. However, none of them would fit the available space, and I didn't want to make a big hole in the wall for the bulky back part of a smart home hub to fit in.

My plan is to have useful information available in the kitchen during breakfast and throughout the day; things like weather, calendar, reminders, photos…

I decided to build it on my own, using components easily found on Amazon. If you decide to use my links for your purchases, as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Components

• 22" Touchscreen display - 470 € (US alternative)
• Raspberry Pi 4 set - 110 € (US link)
• VESA wall mount - 8 € (US alternative)
• Power socket with USB ports - 45 € (US alternative)
• Socket cover frame - 2.5 €
• USB-C Charging cable - 7 €
• USB touch interface cable - 6 €
• Cable management - 11 € (US alternative)
• Velcro-style mounting tape - 25 € (US link)

Total cost: ~700 €

Hardware Installation

Since I had power cables only hanging from a narrow hole in the wall, first I had to install a power socket box. I cut a circular hole (68 mm seems to be standard), installed the plastic orange box and the power socket. I needed 220 V (EU) power for the display power adapter, and one USB port to power the Raspberry Pi, so I bought a power socket which has both. The power output of the two USB ports in total is 2.1 A, but that seems to be enough for the Pi during my tests.

I wanted the display to be flush with the wall as much as possible, so that it doesn't block us from opening the kitchen cabinet and taking things out of it easily. That's why I used a narrow wall mount for the display, which lets the display hang at only 15 mm away from the wall. The display itself is 42.5 mm, so in total the whole thing is only ~6 cm thick.

The display has a hump on the back for the electronics and ports, which made it easy to mount the Raspberry Pi and cables in the gap around it. To make sure cables aren't sagging below the display I used a few velcro cable ties, and to affix the Raspberry Pi box, as well as the display power adapter and remote controller I used a velcro style 3M tape.

The display is a touchscreen, so it delivers its touch input to the Raspberry via a USB cable, and the Raspberry Pi delivers the video signal via an HDMI cable. The Pi is connected to the rest of the home and the internet over WiFi. The display I got comes with all the necessary cables, but I decided to replace some of them with shorter versions or ones with fitting ports without adapters (micro-HDMI on the Pi 4).

This was not a cheap project, but the majority of the budget was used up by the large touchscreen display. If you don't need such a big display or touch input, then you can make it much cheaper. Initially I tried to use a Pi Zero instead of the 4, but for this purpose it was just not performant enough. I consider this project to be a success, since it covers the ugly hole in the wall with wires sticking out, it looks nice, it doesn't block the cabinet door, and most importantly - it's wife approved. Now I just have to make it useful :)

I'll talk about the software setup in a separate upcoming post, but for now I'm using the default Raspberry Pi OS (a.k.a. Raspbian) with Chromium, and it opens up a fullscreen / kiosk mode browser window on startup. While initially setting up the Pi I paired it with a bluetooth keyboard, so that I can easily interact with it, but it also has SSH and VNC enabled for further software configuration.

Ingredients

• 1kg 20% fat ground beef, 70g per burger
• Brioche buns
• Green salad leaves
• American processed cheese
• Salt
• Sauce:
  • 1/1 ketchup
  • 3/4 mayonnaise
  • 1/4 yellow mustard
  • 1/4 Worcester sauce
  • 1/4 hot sauce

Steps

• heat up grill to max, use a cast iron plate
• take the meat out ~30 minutes before grilling
• make the sauce by mixing ingredients
• make 70g meat balls, don’t compress too much
• cover them with plastic wrap
• sear the bun halves on grill
• put the buns aside and put sauce on the bottom halves
• put a meat ball on grill, one at a time
• immediately smash it to burger shape
• salt the burger from above while on grill
• flip the burger and put the cheese on top
• when the cheese has melted, the burger is done

As seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yX_bpbCmfo