Camera Feed in Swift

Live Camera Feed with Swift

Use the Wendy camera template when you want a browser-viewable camera stream without wiring the project from scratch. The template includes wendy.json, camera entitlements, a Dockerfile, Swift backend code, and the browser UI.

Prerequisites

Wendy CLI installed on your development machine
Swift 6.2 or later installed via swiftly
A WendyOS device with a USB camera connected

Setting Up Your Project

Initialize the Project

wendy init swift-camera --target wendyos --language swift --template camera-feed --var APP_ID=swift-camera --var PORT=6003 --var SWIFT_VERSION=6.3 --assistant skip --git-init no
cd swift-camera

wendy init scaffolding the Swift camera-feed project

The generated project is ready to run. After the first run, use the sections below as a code breakdown when you want to understand or customize camera handling, routes, or UI behavior.

Run on WendyOS

wendy run

wendy run deploying the Swift camera-feed container

Wendy will build the app, ask you to select a device if one is not already configured, deploy the container, and print the app URL.

Code Breakdown

Open the app URL (http://${WENDY_HOSTNAME}:6003) from the Wendy run output to view the stream. The postStart hook in wendy.json opens it for you automatically once the server is ready.

Project Structure

The generated project looks like this:

swift-camera/
├── Package.swift
├── Dockerfile
├── wendy.json
├── .swift-version
├── index.html
├── assets/
│   └── wendy-logo.svg
└── Sources/
    └── swift-camera/
        ├── App.swift
        ├── MJPEGCamera.swift
        ├── CameraDiscovery.swift
        ├── JPEGFrameParser.swift
        └── StaticFileMiddleware.swift

Generated wendy.json

The template requests host networking, camera, and GPU entitlements, and registers a readiness probe plus a browser hook on port 6003:

{
    "appId": "swift-camera",
    "platform": "linux",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "entitlements": [
        {
            "type": "network",
            "mode": "host"
        },
        {
            "type": "camera"
        },
        {
            "type": "gpu"
        }
    ],
    "readiness": {
        "tcpSocket": { "port": 6003 },
        "timeoutSeconds": 30
    },
    "hooks": {
        "postStart": {
            "cli": "wendy utils open-browser http://${WENDY_HOSTNAME}:6003"
        }
    }
}

Generated Server Routes

Sources/swift-camera/App.swift builds a Hummingbird server with WebSocket support and exposes:

GET /health — returns 200 OK
GET /cameras — lists detected cameras as JSON
WS /stream — streams MJPEG frames over a WebSocket; send {"switch_camera": "<device>"} to change the source camera
GET / and GET {path+} — serve the bundled index.html single-page UI

The camera is captured via GStreamer/V4L2 in MJPEGCamera.swift, with device enumeration in CameraDiscovery.swift and JPEG frame extraction in JPEGFrameParser.swift.

Generated Dockerfile

The multi-stage Dockerfile builds the binary with swift:6.3-bookworm and runs it on swift:6.3-bookworm-slim with GStreamer and V4L2 installed:

# Stage 1: Build the Swift application
FROM swift:6.3-bookworm AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY Package.swift ./
COPY Sources Sources
RUN swift build -c release

# Stage 2: Runtime image with GStreamer and V4L2
FROM swift:6.3-bookworm-slim
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    gstreamer1.0-tools \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-base \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly \
    v4l-utils \
    ca-certificates \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
COPY --from=builder /app/.build/release/swift-camera /usr/local/bin/swift-camera
COPY index.html ./index.html
COPY assets/ ./assets/
EXPOSE 6003
CMD ["swift-camera"]

Install Wendy

Install Wendy CLI

Install `wendy-agent`