🎥 Linux Webcam Controller (Ubuntu 24.04)

A modern, high-precision webcam controller and optics manager designed for Ubuntu 24.04. It brings advanced camera zoom, auto-framing face tracking, autofocus / manual focus, lighting, color grading, AI virtual backgrounds, bokeh background blur, and green screen chroma keying to applications that lack fine camera controls—such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, OBS Studio, and Web Browsers.

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✨ Features

• 🖼️ Virtual Backgrounds & Blurring (AI & Chroma Key):
  • AI Background Blur (Bokeh): Realistic depth-of-field background blurring with adjustable intensity slider (5px to 51px).
  • AI Virtual Scenes (No Screen Needed): Ultra-fast Google MediaPipe Selfie Segmentation running via LiteRT XNNPACK (under 3ms on CPU).
  • Curated Background Presets: Executive Office, Warm Library, Modern Studio Loft, Cyberpunk Neon, Sunset Gradient.
  • Custom Image Upload: Upload and apply any custom .jpg, .png, or .webp photo from your computer.
  • Physical Green / Blue Screen (Chroma Key): Professional chroma keying engine with Key Color Picker (Green #00FF00, Blue #0047BB, or Custom Sample), Tolerance slider, Edge Smoothness/Feathering, and Spill Suppression to eliminate green reflection halos on subject edges.
• 🔍 Camera Zoom:
  • Manual Digital Zoom: 1.0x to 5.0x smooth cubic interpolation.
  • Pan & Tilt: 2D interactive joystick pad and direct drag-to-pan on the video viewport.
  • Quick Zoom Presets: 1-click 1.0x (Wide), 1.25x, 1.5x (Close-up), 2.0x, 3.0x.
  • Hardware Zoom: Automatically synchronizes with hardware zoom_absolute if supported by the camera firmware.
• 🎯 Auto-Zoom & Smart Face Tracking:
  • Automatically detects your face and smoothly zooms and centers your video feed with cinematic damping (anti-jitter).
  • Configurable tracking speed and framing headroom.
• 🔬 Focus Optics:
  • Continuous Autofocus (focus_automatic_continuous) toggle.
  • Fine-grained Manual Focus slider (focus_absolute) with distance presets (Macro, Normal, Infinity).
• 💡 Lighting & Exposure:
  • Auto-Exposure mode toggle vs Manual Shutter/Exposure time slider (exposure_time_absolute).
  • Backlight Compensation (backlight_compensation).
  • Sensor Gain boost (gain).
• 🎨 Color & Picture Calibration:
  • Auto White Balance toggle vs manual Color Temperature slider (white_balance_temperature: 2800K Warm to 6500K Cool).
  • Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue, Gamma, and Sharpness controls.
  • One-click Factory Defaults Reset.
• 📱 Responsive & Narrow Window Ready:
  • Fully responsive layout that adapts gracefully when you narrow your desktop browser window or use split-screen windows.
• 📹 Virtual Camera Pipeline (MS Teams / Zoom / Meet / Chrome):
  • Streams your zoomed, background-replaced, and color-graded video to a Linux virtual webcam device (/dev/video10 labeled "Webcam Controller Virtual Cam").
  • Simply pick the virtual camera in any conferencing app or browser.
• 💾 Profile Presets:
  • Save, load, and switch custom camera profiles (Meeting Close-up, Smart Face Track, Low Light Boost, Wide Angle, etc.).

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Launch the Application

Run the launcher script:

./start.sh

This automatically sets up the Python virtual environment and opens the controller in your default browser at http://127.0.0.1:8765.

2. Enable Virtual Camera for Zoom / MS Teams / Browsers (One-Time Setup)

To stream your zoomed feed directly into Zoom or MS Teams as a virtual webcam:

sudo ./setup_loopback.sh

This configures v4l2loopback with /dev/video10 as "Webcam Controller Virtual Cam" and enables automatic loading on system boot.

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💻 Architecture

• Backend: Python 3.12, FastAPI, Uvicorn, OpenCV (v4.14), LiteRT XNNPACK (MediaPipe Selfie Segmentation), V4L2 IOCTL / v4l2-ctl wrapper.
• Frontend: Vanilla HTML5, CSS3 Glassmorphism (Ubuntu/GNOME dark aesthetic), WebSockets for real-time bidirectional telemetry.
• Loopback Pipeline: High-speed frame processing and YUYV buffer stream directly to v4l2loopback.