Is there any way to do a text overlay on the PiCamera, raspistill, or USB cameras? It would be great to show the date and time on videos, stills, and timelapse. And even have the option to have other data added from the inputs and outputs. I can do it on my IP cameras, but it would be amazing to use the RaspberryPi and USB cameras. I have an example attached from my IP camera.
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There’s no current way to do this, but I have an idea how it can be done. A Custom Function module can be written that will periodically scan the camera stills directory and modify any new images that are found. A value in the image metadata can be created to identify which images have already been altered. This could allow you to make any type of modification you desire on the image, be it static text, measurements, or anything else.
I just threw together a basic Function module. You can import it on the Configure → Custom Functions page. It allows you to select one of your Cameras and when you activate the Function, it will get the full paths of both still and timelapse images. This information is printed in the Daemon Log. This is all this function currently does, but it’s a good start to now begin processing the images with opencv or other software to add the overlay, then mark the image somehow to identify that it’s already been modified.
camera_image_overlay.py (5.2 KB)
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Thanks I’ll play around with it.
Interesting, text overlay is a feauture id love to have! Going to keep an eye on this thread, let us know if you got the overlays working.