Sources:
http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/InstallGuide%20%3A%20Debian
http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/InstallGuide_Linux
http://mitchtech.net/raspberry-pi-opencv/
https://github.com/jayrambhia/Install-OpenCV/blob/master/Ubuntu/2.4/opencv2_4_3.sh
http://www.ozbotz.org/opencv-installation/

First of all, building OpenCV on Raspbian (Raspberry Pi) will take at least 4 hours. So consider doing this before you sleep so you can leave it compiling overnight.

And also if you’re doing all this through SSH, linux’s “screen” program will definitely very useful. It’s not installed by default, so do this:

sudo apt-get install screen

Click here for short and quick tutorial of how to use screen.

Now let’s cook!

1. Prepare fresh installed Rasbian on Raspberry Pi.
2. Run sudo apt-get update, then sudo apt-get upgrade, to make sure everything is updated.
3. Copy and paste this into the terminal to install all the dependencies (NOTE: Some package names are altered, e.g. libavcodec52 is not available anymore, replaced by libavcodec53):

   sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
   sudo apt-get -y install cmake
   sudo apt-get -y install pkg-config
   sudo apt-get -y install libpng12-0 libpng12-dev libpng++-dev libpng3
   sudo apt-get -y install libpnglite-dev libpngwriter0-dev libpngwriter0c2
   sudo apt-get -y install zlib1g-dbg zlib1g zlib1g-dev
   sudo apt-get -y install libjasper-dev libjasper-runtime libjasper1
   sudo apt-get -y install pngtools libtiff4-dev libtiff4 libtiffxx0c2 libtiff-tools
   sudo apt-get -y install libjpeg8 libjpeg8-dev libjpeg8-dbg libjpeg-prog
   sudo apt-get -y install libavcodec53 libavcodec-dev libavformat53 libavformat-dev libavutil51 libavutil-dev libswscale2 libswscale-dev
   sudo apt-get -y install libgstreamer0.10-0-dbg libgstreamer0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-dev
   sudo apt-get -y install libxine1-ffmpeg libxine-dev libxine1-bin
   sudo apt-get -y install libunicap2 libunicap2-dev
   sudo apt-get -y install libdc1394-22-dev libdc1394-22 libdc1394-utils
   sudo apt-get -y install swig
   sudo apt-get -y install python-numpy
   
   sudo apt-get -y install libpython2.6 python-dev python2.6-dev
   sudo apt-get -y install libjpeg-progs libjpeg-dev
   sudo apt-get -y install libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
   
   sudo apt-get -y install libqt4-dev libgtk2.0-dev
   

4. We need to install other dependencies (x264, ffmpeg, and v4l) manually:

   sudo apt-get remove ffmpeg x264 x264-dev
   
   wget ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/x264/snapshots/x264-snapshot-20120528-2245-stable.tar.bz2
   tar -xvf x264-snapshot-20120528-2245-stable.tar.bz2
   cd x264-snapshot-20120528-2245-stable/
   ./configure --enable-shared --enable-pic
   make
   sudo make install
   cd ..
   
   wget http://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-0.11.1.tar.bz2
   echo "Installing ffmpeg"
   tar -xvf ffmpeg-0.11.1.tar.bz2
   cd ffmpeg-0.11.1/
   ./configure --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-version3 --enable-x11grab --enable-shared --enable-pic
   make
   sudo make install
   cd ..
   
   wget http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-utils/v4l-utils-0.8.8.tar.bz2
   tar -xvf v4l-utils-0.8.8.tar.bz2
   cd v4l-utils-0.8.8/
   make
   sudo make install
   cd ..
   
   

5. Download desired version of OpenCV, in this example we’re using version 2.4.3. Unpack it anywhere you like.

   tar -xjvf  OpenCV-2.4.3.tar.bz2
   rm OpenCV-2.4.3.tar.bz2
   cd OpenCV-2.4.3/
   mkdir build
   cd build/
   

6. Then to create standard configuration just follow this command:

   sudo cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -D BUILD_NEW_PYTHON_SUPPORT=ON -D BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON .. | sudo tee ./CMAKE.log

   The part | sudo tee ./CMAKE.log is used for logging purpose. Normally I used redirection (>>) but it won’t work if you are trying to write inside a folder with no permission.

   You can use cmake-gui if it’s more comfortable for you, but it has to be run from a desktop environment (X Server is running). I did this over SSH so I don’t have the luxury of X.

7. Then a configuration will be generated, make sure everything you need has no problem. For example see the first lines, it should be able to found the libraries needed, such as gtk+2.0, libavcodec, libavformat, etc.
   In my case cmake couldn’t find linux/videodev.h. According to this source, apparently there’s a change of structure for libv4l but OpenCV didn’t take that into account. In my installation I found the file libv4l1-videodev.h inside /usr/local/include, so we need to make a symlink to the location searched by OpenCV installation:

   sudo ln -s /usr/local/include/libv4l1-videodev.h /usr/include/linux/videodev.h
   

   TODO: there’s also one missing library, ffmpeg/avformat.h, but I’m not sure whether it’s necessary to fix or not.

8. Now we’re ready to start the build. This process will take a long time to finish. So as said before, consider doing this before you sleep overnight. I do all this through SSH (I only have 1 keyboard and 1 mouse and I don’t want to back and forth plugging them between my laptop and the Raspberry Pi), so here’s where “screen” program is very useful. You can ignore this if you don’t use SSH:

   screen -S OpenCV_Installation

   Seems like nothing happened, but what actually happens is “screen” starts a new TTY/session, which you can build OpenCV, then you can “detach” it so it will run on background. After that you can quit the SSH session and turn off your laptop, without even bothering the building process.

   Now change user into root

   sudo su -

   then execute this as root

   make && make install
   

   or if you want some logging

   make | tee make.log && make install | tee make_install.log
   

9. Now “detach” the compilation “screen” by pressing Ctrl+A then Ctrl+D consecutively. The building process will run in background. To check the process you have to get back to the “screen”, simply call in any session – either SSH or local

   screen -r

   If you use the logging with tee make.log and tee make_install.log as mentioned above, to check the status you can use tail

   tail -f make.log
   

10. Sit back, watch some movie, or sleep. See you in 5 hours!

POST INSTALLATION SETUP

Now that you have energy from your sleep, let’s continue setting up the system to complete the installation.

1. We have to tell the system that there are libraries available. Create a file named opencv.conf located in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/

   sudo touch /etc/ld.so.conf.d/opencv.conf
   

   Then using your favorite editor add this line into the file:

   /usr/local/lib
   

   After that:

   sudo ldconfig /etc/ld.so.conf.d
   

2. Then we have to add this 2 lines into the file /etc/bash.bashrc

   PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
   export PKG_CONFIG_PATH
   

Testing

NOTE: Seems like my Raspberry Pi is unable to detect my cheap Logitech C170 yet. This is weird.

OpenCV comes with lots of pre-compiled sample programs, find it in build/bin folder. Some of them are drawing and kmeans. And if you have USB webcam you can check out lkdemo

./lkdemo

Press r then it will start tracking objects. Cool huh?

I also found this over here, to test camera capture using python.

import cv2

cv2.namedWindow("preview")
vc = cv2.VideoCapture(0)

if vc.isOpened(): # try to get the first frame
    rval, frame = vc.read()
else:
    rval = False

while rval:
    cv2.imshow("preview", frame)
    rval, frame = vc.read()
    key = cv2.waitKey(20)
    if key == 27: # exit on ESC
        break

Save it and run it with python:

python opencv_cam_test.py

For obvious reasons you can’t do this over SSH.

1. Get a SD Card, consult to compatibility page on http://elinux.org

2. Plug it in to linux machine.

3. sudo cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0

4. Delete every partition from there, don’t forget to select “write”.

5. Download Raspbian from here, check the sha1sum, then unzip. You’ll get a image file named something like 2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.img

6. Write it into your SD card, make sure you write it into the SD card device (e.g. /dev/mmcblk0, /dev/sdd), not the partition of the SD card (e.g. /dev/mmcblk0s1, /dev/sdd1).

$ sudo dd bs=4M if=./2012-12-16-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

Wait until it finishes. There will be no progress bar or indicator whatsoever, other than the SD card reader’s LED.

The Raspbian image is about 2GB in size. No matter how big your SD card, when you use it as it is after flashing it won’t be able to utilize the rest of the freespace. Then you need to expand/grow the partition. We do this later on below.

7. Flush the buffer (NOTE: at the first time I skipped this part, then random block reading error pops out everywhere. Segmentation fault, filesystem panic, etc. So make sure you do this.)

$ sudo sync

8. Remove the SD card, put it on the Raspberry Pi and fire it up!

9. First boot it will take some time, after then a blue screen (of life) will come up. It’s actually the “raspi-config” program.

10. Select the second option from the top to expand the free space of your SD card the next time Raspbian reboots. Configure other options as needed (other than expanding the partition, mostly not really necessary).

11. Select finish, then your Raspberry Pi will reboot.

12. Log in with username pi and default password raspberry (if you didn’t change it before in raspi-config). Check out the desktop environment by:

$ startx

Enjoy your Raspberry Pi.