gst-rpicamsrc 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. As of the last time this README was updated, Raspbian Jessie has GStreamer 1.4.4, which is recent enough. Install the GStreamer 1.0 dev packages, then just build and install this module. apt-get install autoconf automake libtool pkg-config libgstreamer1.0-dev \ libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libraspberrypi-dev For example, again on Raspbian: ./autogen.sh --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. See the REQUIREMENTS file for the full list of build requirements.