Installing OpenCV on Raspberry Pi

OpenCV is one of the most powerful libraries for image processing, providing many functions such as facial recognition to object detection and many more check here . In Order to use it with your raspberry pi you need to follow some steps to enable your py script to use it.

Things you will need:

1- Putty(SSH Client)
2- Internet connectivity on your pi

STEPS TO INSTALL:

1- Expand memory

Log in with your pi account through SSH (username=pi , password=raspberry)by default,

Enter  

sudo raspi-config

Expand Filesystem and press Enter , finish then reboot your pi by entering the following command

sudo reboot

2- Update and install all the essential files needed for the build

sudo apt-get update

---wait for the update to finish

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkg-config python-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtk2.0 zlib1g-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev libjasper-dev libavcodec-dev swig unzip

sudo apt-get install libopencv-dev python-opencv python-dev

3- Download the opencv zip file from server

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/opencvlibrary/opencv-unix/2.4.9/opencv-2.4.9.zip

unzip opencv-2.4.9.zip

---unzips the compressed file

4- Installing OpenCV

cd opencv-2.4.9

---changes directory to the location where opencv is downloaded

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -DBUILD_PERF_TESTS=OFF -DBUILD_opencv_gpu=OFF -DBUILD_opencv_ocl=OFF

---After the completion of above step

Enter 

make

---This process is a little time consuming

After this Enter

sudo make install

---This final step will install the opencv

If the installation was successful the following command will show the current installed version of OpenCV

pkg-config --modversion opencv 

Happy coding ;)