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Raspberry Pi Setup

If your Pi is already imaged​

Most kits ship with the Recording Pi pre-imaged and the software pre-installed. Plug it into the same network as the camera over Ethernet, power it on, and skip to Verify.

Flashing a blank SD card​

If you received a blank SD card instead:

  1. Download Raspberry Pi Imager on your laptop
  2. Choose Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) as the OS
  3. Before writing, click the ⚙️ (advanced options) icon and set:
    • A hostname (e.g. recording-pi)
    • SSH enabled, with a username/password
    • Wi-Fi details, if this site isn't using Ethernet for the Pi

Raspberry Pi Imager advanced options

  1. Write the image, then insert the card into the Pi and power it on

Installing the software​

From your laptop, on the same network as the Pi:

PI_HOST=recording-pi.local PI_USER=pi ./deploy/deploy.sh

This builds the frontend, copies the software to the Pi, and installs everything it needs (it'll prompt for the Pi's sudo password partway through). When it finishes, check the log for a line like:

ONVIF discovery: resolved RTSP URL from camera at ...

That confirms the Pi found the camera on its own — no manual configuration needed.

Deploy script completing successfully

Going live​

Once the above works, enable the service so it starts automatically on boot and restarts if it ever crashes:

ssh pi@recording-pi.local
sudo systemctl enable --now recording-pi
sudo systemctl status recording-pi

Continue to Verify to confirm a full recording works end to end.