Install OpenCV on Raspberry Pi in Less Than 10 Minutes

Installing opencv on raspberry can be quite challenging and time-taking, if you do it the usual way. It takes around 3 long hours just to compile the opencv source code on raspberry pi 3 model b+.

Buttt, stick with me and in this tutorial, we are going to install opencv on your raspberry pi in less than 10 minutes.

We are going to use a pre-compiled opencv source code from piwheels and thus going to save a ton of time and energy on this.

you will need:

• raspberry pi setup with installed OS
• laptop or a desktop(only if you want to install via ssh or vnc)
• stable internet connection

I assume that you already have a supported OS installed on your pi.

Now connect your pi to your wifi network.

This method for some reason doesn't work with python 2.7.

So open the terminal and check for python3

To check write the command

python3 --version

If python3 is installed on your pi then the version number should appear after running this command as shown in the image.

If it is installed then you are welcome to go ahead with this tutorial or else please install python3 and come back.

We need to install some dependencies before installing OpenCV.

Simply run these commands one by one and you are good to go.

I will mention the approximate time that it took me on raspberry pi 3 model b+ below every command.

Timings may vary for you depending upon your internet speed and the board you have.

sudo apt-get install libhdf5-dev libhdf5-serial-dev libhdf5-103

38 seconds

sudo apt-get install libqtgui4 libqtwebkit4 libqt4-test 

1 minute and 42 seconds

sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev

31 seconds

sudo apt-get install libjasper-dev

20 seconds

Now, we are going to download the latest version of pip on your pi. Simply run this command to download the latest version of pip

wget  https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py

8 seconds

Now, run this command to install the latest version of pip.

sudo python3 get-pip.py

37 seconds

Now, you have installed all the required dependencies. Jump to the next step to install openCV.

Now, since you have installed all the required dependencies, we only need to run one more command to install OpenCV from piwheels.

sudo pip3 install opencv-contrib-python==3.4.6.27

22 seconds

Congrats, you have successfully installed OpenCV on your pi. Your terminal should look similar to the above image now.

To test whether OpenCV is now installed to our Raspberry Pi, we will make use of our Python 3 installation.

Launch into the Python terminal by running the command below.

python3

While we are within Python, we can now import the OpenCV Python module using the command below.
By importing the module, we can first check to see if OpenCV will even load on our Pi.

import cv2

With the OpenCV module now imported, we should be able to retrieve its version.
To retrieve OpenCV’s version, use the following command.

cv2.__version__

If everything is now working as intended and OpenCV has been successfully installed to your Raspberry Pi, you should see text like the following appear in the command line.

'3.4.6'

Hopefully, at this point, you will now have OpenCV up and running.

Thank you,

Nishant