This guide will take you through the steps needed to configure a Raspberry Pi to act as an RTMP server so that you can stream directly to the Pi and then have it multi-stream to other destinations! There are many other guides about NGINX with RTMP on a Raspberry Pi, but they unfortunately don’t cover what you need to integrate with Microsoft Stream.
My hope is this will fill the Microsoft knowledge gap and help you avoid a monthly expense for a restreaming service. This guide is provided without warranty or any expectation that I would have the capacity to help support your own setup. Let’s get started!
I recently went through all of these steps in a livestream on my YouTube channel. If you’d like to follow along with that to get even more context, please watch below:
Credit where credit is due
I learned this process from several other guides and am pulling what I learned together to share what worked for me. Please check out these other guides for other great content about live video:
How to make an RTMP Streaming Server and Player with a Raspberry Pi
— By Aaron Parecki
Parts List
Micro HDMI to HDMI cable or adapter for initial setup
USB keyboard for initial setup
Ethernet Cable
Set up the Raspberry Pi
Assemble the Pi into the case
Flash the OS to the MicroSD Card using the Raspberry Pi Imager. I chose to install Raspbery Pi OS (other) > Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit)
Insert the MicroSD card, plug in the monitor, keyboard, and power on the Pi
Log in using the default username pi and password raspberry
Configure the Raspberry Pi
Initial Setup
Install NGINX and the RTMP module
Configure the RTMP server
Configure your encoder
Test it out
Some helpful commands to know
SSH to your Pi
ssh pi@<hostname>.local and enter passwordEdit RTMP Settings
Test your NGINX config file
Restart NGINX
Reload your NGINX Config