Recently I purchased a raspberry pi 4 to see how it performs basic computer vision tasks. I largely followed this guide on building opencv https://www.learnopencv.com/install-opencv-4-on-raspberry-pi/

However, in the guide there are several missing dependencies on a fresh version of raspbian buster. There are also some apparent errors in the CMakeLists.txt file which other users already discovered. After patching these fixes and adding the needed missing dependencies, I now have opencv running on my pi. Here’s my complete script below.

IMPORTANT: You must READ the script, don’t just run it! For example, you should check the version of python you have at the time you run this script. When I ran it i was at python 3.7. Also, feel free to bump to a later version (or master) of opencv.

Oh, also during the numpy step it hung and i was too lazy to look into it. It didn’t seem to affect my ability to use opencv – so i didn’t go back and dig. My bad.

#!/bin/bash

cvVersion="4.1.1"
pythonVersion="3.7"
opencvDirRoot=/home/pi/opencv

sudo apt-get -y purge wolfram-engine
sudo apt-get -y purge libreoffice*
sudo apt-get -y clean
sudo apt-get -y autoremove

mkdir -p $opencvDirRoot
cd $opencvDirRoot

# Clean build directories
rm -rf opencv/build
rm -rf opencv_contrib/build

# Create directory for installation
rm -fr installation
mkdir -p installation
mkdir installation/OpenCV-"$cvVersion"


sudo apt -y update
sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y remove x264 libx264-dev
 
## Install dependencies
sudo apt-get install libblas-dev liblapack-dev
sudo apt-get install libeigen3-dev
sudo apt-get -y install qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential checkinstall cmake pkg-config yasm
sudo apt-get -y install git gfortran
sudo apt-get -y install libjpeg8-dev libjasper-dev libpng12-dev

 
sudo apt-get -y install libtiff5-dev
 
sudo apt-get -y install libtiff-dev

sudo apt-get -y install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libdc1394-22-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libxine2-dev libv4l-dev
cd /usr/include/linux
sudo ln -s -f ../libv4l1-videodev.h videodev.h
cd $opencvDirRoot

sudo apt-get -y install libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libgtk2.0-dev libtbb-dev qt5-default
sudo apt-get -y install libatlas-base-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libmp3lame-dev libtheora-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libvorbis-dev libxvidcore-dev libx264-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libopencore-amrnb-dev libopencore-amrwb-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libavresample-dev
sudo apt-get -y install x264 v4l-utils
sudo apt-get -y install libmesa-dev
sudo apt-get -y install freeglut3-dev



# Optional dependencies
sudo apt-get -y install libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
sudo apt-get -y install libgoogle-glog-dev libgflags-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libgphoto2-dev libeigen3-dev libhdf5-dev doxygen

sudo apt-get -y install python3-dev python3-pip
sudo -H pip3 install -U pip numpy
sudo apt-get -y install python3-testresources

cd $opencvDirRoot
# Install virtual environment
python3 -m venv OpenCV-"$cvVersion"-py3
echo "# Virtual Environment Wrapper" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "alias workoncv-$cvVersion=\"source $opencvDirRoot/OpenCV-$cvVersion-py3/bin/activate\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source "$opencvDirRoot"/OpenCV-"$cvVersion"-py3/bin/activate
#############

############ For Python 3 ############
# now install python libraries within this virtual environment
sudo sed -i 's/CONF_SWAPSIZE=100/CONF_SWAPSIZE=1024/g' /etc/dphys-swapfile
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start
pip install numpy dlib
# quit virtual environment
deactivate

git clone https://github.com/opencv/opencv.git
cd opencv
git checkout $cvVersion
cd ..

git clone https://github.com/opencv/opencv_contrib.git
cd opencv_contrib
git checkout $cvVersion
cd ..

cd opencv
mkdir build
cd build


# Eigen/Core to eigen3/Eigen/Core
sed -i s,Eigen/Core,eigen3/Eigen/Core/g ../modules/core/include/opencv2/core/private.hpp

# Add these to  opencv/samples/cpp/CMakeLists.txt 
find_package(OpenGL REQUIRED)
find_package(GLUT REQUIRED)

cmake .. -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE \
            -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$opencvDirRoot/installation/OpenCV-"$cvVersion" \
            -D INSTALL_C_EXAMPLES=ON \
            -D INSTALL_PYTHON_EXAMPLES=ON \
            -D WITH_TBB=ON \
            -D WITH_V4L=ON \
            -D OPENCV_PYTHON3_INSTALL_PATH=$opencvDirRoot/OpenCV-$cvVersion-py3/lib/python$pythonVersion/site-packages \
        -D WITH_QT=ON \
        -D WITH_OPENGL=ON \
    -D OPENCV_EXTRA_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS=-latomic \
        -D OPENCV_EXTRA_MODULES_PATH=../../opencv_contrib/modules \
        -D BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON


make -j$(nproc)
make install


sudo sed -i 's/CONF_SWAPSIZE=1024/CONF_SWAPSIZE=100/g' /etc/dphys-swapfile
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile stop
sudo /etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start

echo "sudo modprobe bcm2835-v4l2" >> ~/.profile