Set your Pi for mobile streaming video

Sean Conway helps you ride the rails with a Raspberry Pi and its camera, with a bit of streaming video trickery thrown in for good measure.

- Sean Conway

Here's the cable harness that connects the external battery and power-off trigger switch to the Pi camera system.

VIDEO

OUR EXPERT

Sean Conway is a former IT security specialist from a national telecoms company who implements Pi-based train projects to get his much-needed technology fix, now that he's retired.

YOU NEED

> Raspberry Pi Zero 2W

> Raspberry Pi OS Lite

> 32GB SD card

>2.5A 5VDC PSU

> Pi V2.1 camera

> 4,500mAmp/hr battery

> 2.54mm single-row pin header

> 2.54mm pitch straight six-position pin header connector

> Two HO-scale well cars

> Assorted model styrene plastic hobby supplies

Incorporating single-board computers into a hobby such as model railways is a great way for a maker to double their pleasure by combining their passions. In this tutorial, we're going to develop a Raspberry Pi camera system to produce a video from a moving HO scale model train.

The tutorial will introduce the latest Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (PZ2W) and provide the configuration details required to stream video from the camera-fitted Pi. We'll also touch on the model rail cars.

The PZ2W is ideal for this project. Its small physical size fits nicely in the limited space of an HO-scale model rail car. The quad-core processor packs enough processing power to support streaming content. All aboard? Then let's get started.