Programming languages

In our previous post How to save Raspberry Pi raw 10-bit image as 16-bit PNG using pypng we investigated how to use the pypng library to save 10-bit raw Raspberry Pi Camera images to 16-bit PNG files.

However, saving a single image took ~26 seconds using CPython 3.7.3. Since pypy can provide speedups to many Python workloads, we tried using pypy3 7.0.0 (see How to install pypy3 on the Raspberry Pi) to speed up the PNG encoding.

Results

pypng PNG export seems to be one of the workloads that are much slower using pypy3.

• CPython 3.7.3: Encoding took 24.22 seconds
• pypy3 7.0.0: Encoding took 266.60 seconds

Encoding is more that 10x slower when using pypy3!

Hence I don’t recommend using pypy3 to speed up pypng encoding workloads, at least not on the Raspberry Pi!

Full example

This example is derived from our full example previously posted on How to save Raspberry Pi raw 10-bit image as 16-bit PNG using pypng:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import time
import picamera
import picamera.array
import numpy as np
import png

# Capture image
print("Capturing image...")
with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
    with picamera.array.PiBayerArray(camera) as stream:
        camera.capture(stream, 'jpeg', bayer=True)
        # Demosaic data and write to rawimg
        # (stream.array contains the non-demosaiced data)
        rawimg = stream.demosaic()

# Write to PNG
print("Writing 16-bit PNG...")
t0 = time.time()
with open('16bit.png', 'wb') as outfile:
    writer = png.Writer(width=rawimg.shape[1], height=rawimg.shape[0], bitdepth=16, greyscale=False)
    # rawimg is a (w, h, 3) RGB uint16 array
    # but PyPNG needs a (w, h*3) array
    png_data = np.reshape(rawimg, (-1, rawimg.shape[1]*3))
    # Scale 10 bit data to 16 bit values (else it will appear black)
    # NOTE: Depending on your photo and the settings,
    #  it might still appear quite dark!
    png_data *= int(2**6)
    writer.write(outfile, png_data)
t1 = time.time()

print(f"Encoding took {(t1 - t0):.2f} seconds")

This post shows you an easy way of getting pypy3 running on the Raspberry Pi. I used Raspbian Buster on a Raspberry Pi 3 for this example. On Raspbian buster this will install pypy3 7.x!

First install pypy3 and virtualenv:

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install pypy3 pypy3-dev virtualenv

Now we can create a virtualenv to install pypy packages into:

virtualenv -p /usr/bin/pypy3 ~/pypy3-virtualenv

Now we can activate the virtualenv. You need to do this every time you want to use pypy, for each shell / SSH connection separately:

source ~/pypy3-virtualenv/bin/activate

If your shell prompt is now prefixed by (pypy3-virtualenv) you have successfully activated the virtualenv:

(pypy3-virtualenv) uli@raspberrypi:~ $

Now python points to pypy3 and pip will install packages locally to ~/pypy3-virtualenv.

Now you can use e.g.

python3 myscript.py

to run your script (both python and python3 will point to pypy3 if you activated the virtual environment!).

Note: Installing pypy3-dev is not strictly neccessary to get pypy3 running, but you need it in order to compile native librarie like numpy.

You can use the picamera Python library to capture a raw sensor image of a camera attached to the Raspberry Pi via CSI:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import picamera
import picamera.array
import numpy as np

# Capture image
print("Capturing image...")
with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
    with picamera.array.PiBayerArray(camera) as stream:
        camera.capture(stream, 'jpeg', bayer=True)
        # Demosaic data and write to rawimg
        # (stream.array contains the non-demosaiced data)
        rawimg = stream.demosaic()

rawimg is a numpy uint16 array of dimensions (w, h, 3), e.g. (1944, 2592, 3) and contains integer values from 0 to 1023.

You can, for example, save it in a NumPy file using

np.save("rawimg.npy", rawimg) # Reload with np.load("rawimg.npy")

or save it in a compressed format using

np.savez_compressed("rawimg.npz", rawimg) # Reload with np.load("rawimg.npz")

Problem:

You want to run a Python script using the Raspberry Pi camera but you see an error message like

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "mycamera.py", line 2, in <module>
    import picamera
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'picamera'

Solution:

You need to install the picamera Python module using pip:

sudo pip3 install picamera

or, if you are still using Python 2.x:

sudo pip install picamera

In case you see

sudo: pip3: command not found

install pip3 using

sudo apt install -y python3-pip