These notes are out of date and preserved just in case. Follow the instructions in box_sw_manual_install instead.

Installing an Updated OpenCV on the Raspberry Pi

The following instructions assume an updated Raspbian system.

Based on OpenCV Linux Install.

[To build/install on Cygwin, see OpenCV Cygwin Install.]

Build dependencies

Packages that need to be installed in addition to the defaults. [There may be something missing here that isn’t included in the default Raspbian install, but this is what I had to add to my current setup.]

cmake
libgtk2.0-dev
python3-dev
libavcodec-dev
libavformat-dev
libswscale-dev
libpng-dev
libjasper-dev
libtiff-dev

To install these:

$ sudo apt-get install cmake libgtk2.0-dev python3-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libpng-dev libjasper-dev libtiff-dev

Download OpenCV

ATLeS currently works and has been tested with OpenCV 3.2.0. You can download this release from OpenCV’s Releases page. ATLeS will likely work with other versions, but compatibility is not guaranteed.

Build instructions

In the opencv-3.2.0 directory, run:

$ mkdir release
$ cd release
$ cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -D BUILD_EXAMPLES=off -D BUILD_TESTS=off -D BUILD_PERF_TESTS=off ..

In the output of cmake, verify that “OpenCV modules”>”To be built” lists python, “GUI” has “YES” for GTK+, and the “Python” section lists correct paths to binaries/libraries. Tests, examples, and performance tests are not built to save space. It takes far too much space with those enabled (I ran out of space with 1.1GB free to start).

$ make

This step, building OpenCV with the above configuration, takes about 4 hours on the RPi B+.

$ sudo make install

The easiest way to check the installation now is to launch the python interpreter and type import cv2. If it does not report an error when importing the module, the installation is probably complete.