This is a GStreamer wrapper around the raspivid/raspistill functionality of the RaspberryPi, providing a GStreamer source element capturing from the Rpi camera. To use it, you need GStreamer 1.0. On Raspbian, you can use the packages being built by a volunteer by adding to your apt sources.list: deb http://vontaene.de/raspbian-updates/ . main Install the GStreamer 1.0 dev packages, then just build and install this module. For example, again on Raspbian: ./autogen --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/ make sudo make install Then, you can try out the camera with a pipeline line: gst-launch-1.0 rpicamsrc bitrate=1000000 ! filesink location=test.h264 should produce a file called test.h264, while showing a preview window on the screen. gst-inspect-1.0 rpicamsrc to get an idea of the properties that have been implemented.