Note: 'fuel' aims for Intel GPUs (mostly for cases where CPUs have integrated graphics).

'Fuel' is a webcam background removal solution with budget-friendly GPU optimization via OpenVINO for integrated GPUs. It is well-suited for systems lacking an NVIDIA GPU and equipped with Intel CPUs featuring integrated graphics. The solution can be used as a fake webcam under Linux for online meetings, providing a desirable artificial background.

• background substitution
• blurring background

• OpenVINO
• OpenCV

The solution has been tested under Ubuntu 23.10 and might be to work on other platforms, but hasn't been tested.

• Python

Installation might not be straightforward and could require some system administration knowledge.

• First of all, you need to check if your CPU is on the list of OpenVINO supported CPUs
• Install Intel OpenVINO Toolkit for Linux
• Install v4l2loopback and create a virtual webcam. It might be performed like sudo apt install -y v4l2loopback-dkms v4l-utils v4l2loopback-utils and sudo v4l2loopback-ctl add --exclusive-caps=1 --name="fake-cam" /dev/video3 v4l2-ctl --list-devices or quite close to.
• Install Python 3 if you haven't done so already. (In my case, everything was tested on Python 3.11)
• Install a virtual environment for Python 3 (venv)
• Clone repository git clone https://github.com/tdv/fuel.git
• Go to the directory cd fuel
• Make a virtual environment using the command python3 -m venv venv
• Run the virtual environment using source ./venv/bin/activate
• Install all required packages using pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Congrats, you are ready to use this!

• Activate the virtual environment (if not already active)
• Explore available commands via python3 fuel.py -h
• Start using, for example, with python3 fuel.py -s webcam -w /dev/video0 -d fakecam -m background -b ./background/bg1.jpg -f /dev/video3
• Test it, for instance, with ffplay -f v4l2 /dev/video3