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I have an IP-CAM that streams video over RTSP and I want to detect bar codes from it with zbarcam (from Ubuntu's zbar-tools package).

According zbarcam's manual, it expects to be given a video4linux character device (default /dev/video0). How can I let it receive that RTSP stream instead?

I tried to use mplayer, but I can't figure out how I could use that to pipe the stream to zbarcam.

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    You might be able to implement it using the instructions from superuser.com/questions/411897/… – Cristian Măgherușan-Stanciu Aug 31 '14 at 20:35
  • Great hint. Meantime I tried to create a node (mknod) but this didn't worked. I will try that ffmpeg v4l-device. Thank you. You better should use answers, then i can vote. – Bernd Ott Sep 1 '14 at 6:54
  • I wasn't actually giving a real answer, it was just a hint. I'll try to suggest an answer more properly. – Cristian Măgherușan-Stanciu Sep 2 '14 at 15:24
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Try something on these lines:

sudo apt-get install v4l2loopback-utils gstreamer1.0-tools
sudo modprobe v4l2loopback # might not be needed
gst-launch-1.0 -v rtspsrc location=rtsp://your_stream_url ! v4l2sink device=/dev/video1

Then you should be able to use zbarcam against /dev/video1 as usual.

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  • I think this could work, but not on my rasp pi. there is a problem with that v4l2loopback, can't get it to work. – Bernd Ott Sep 3 '14 at 20:06
  • What exactly fails? I guess v4l2loopback should be cross-platform... – Cristian Măgherușan-Stanciu Sep 9 '14 at 18:23
  • Is not part of my dist. so i have to compile it. won't compile because i didn't setup the infrastructure correct. I only need time, it's not a technical problem anymore. thx – Bernd Ott Sep 10 '14 at 15:12

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