Question

As we all know we can have /dev/video0 as a directory for receiving the output of a webcam.

Is it possible to create a fake /dev/something directory through a C program and continuously output there the contents of some created png files in order to create a fake webcam for example?

I will then read the live stream for an other application.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If all you need is a place in the filesystem where some application can read some specific data, use mkfifo to create it.

Then you can write a producer that writes whatever you need at whatever bitrate to it and have a consumer reading from it. If you output what the consumer expects, you might be able to get something that resembles a “live stream” of faked data.