This repository provides Python code to connect a microscope, or other USB camera, to Linux and display its video stream, take photos and record videos. It looks like this:

This code has been written in Python3. It relies on OpenCV to connect to the camera and to save pictures and videos. The GUI is written in PyQt5. Both necessary packages can be installed with this command on Ubuntu Linux:

sudo apt install python3-pyqt5 python3-opencv

On other platforms PyQt5 and opencv can be installed with this command

pip install opencv-python PyQt5

where pip3 should be used instead of pip when appropriate to avoid accidentally installing Python 2 packages.

Command-line arguments are supported. Command-line arguments are the cameras to display. They are validated and presented in a drop-down box. When usb-camera is called without arguments, it searches for connected cameras and presents them in a drop-down box. The video stream from the first camera is displayed first.

Icons are obtained from publicdomainvectors.org.