RasRig puts older Raspberry Pi boards to use in a modular multi-camera setup

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When recording a video of a DIY project, it’s important to capture multiple angles or perspectives. This means multiple cameras and sometimes a computer for each. That can get expensive, so one engineer developed a modular multi-camera project that uses inexpensive SBCs to get the perfect camera angles. Since he used Raspberry Pi for the setup, it’s called the RasRig. Let’s take a look.

If you want to start streaming your games, there are multiple reasons why OBS is so popular.

Devon Bray, an engineer from Boston, developed the RasRig project. It stemmed from his need to “capture the flow between the computer and the workbench” with multiple cameras in various places throughout his workspace. Bray has tested the setup with the standard Raspberry Pi camera module, the Raspberry Pi HQ camera, and various inexpensive OV5647 wide-angle camera modules available from several manufacturers like Adafruit and Waveshare.

Bray needed a cost-effective way to incorporate multiple camera angles into his live streams. He wanted to have at least three different videos of his workbench streaming simultaneously, each from a different angle.

Since all Raspberry Pi boards have at least one CSI port for connecting a camera, Bray tested using a mjpg-streamer on one to transmit the video feed to OBS Studio. It worked very well, allowing for easy camera additions when needed.

Here’s the fun part: Bray was able to get a three-camera setup working quite well using Raspberry Pi 3B SBCs. This highlights a great way you can use those older SBCs you’ve got gathering dust. Here’s a preview of the first video he created using the RasRig.

Bray started using his RasRig with three assemblies offering separate camera angles:

Along the way, Bray developed playbooks and scripts specifically to transmit the video from the Raspberry Pi to OBS Studio. He does note that he was only able to get the scripts and playbooks to work on a Raspberry Pi 3B, however. Bray doesn't explain precisely why, but he does note that mjpeg-streamer does not run reliably on modern versions of Raspberry Pi OS. That said, those familiar with OBS Studio should be able to develop their own, using Bray's repository as a starting point.

This is a terrific way to use your Raspberry Pi and its CSI camera port. You can easily build your own RasRig setup since Bray made everything you need to know available to the public. The OBS playbooks and scripts for the Raspberry Pi are on Bray’s RasRig GitHub repository.

For the hardware side of things, Bray goes into all the details in his blog post outlining the project. He’s also made all the 3D printable files (for the brackets and mounts) available on Printables. You’ll also find a bill of materials there to help you acquire the right parts for the project.

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