Yes, most of our early product prototyping was Pi-based. I've experimented with cameras, parallel stream processing, opencv, even voice assistants. It's a great platform. Happy to answer any questions. Also, lots of tutorials (on Medium and YT) for your exact setup.
I looked at some tutorials and videos, but I can't seem to be able to create a smooth stream no matter what I try: different frame rates, different resolutions, etc. RTSP streaming works reliably for me, but the stream is always choppy. Have you had a better experience?
You mentioned VLC playback is choppy on your desktop or phone. Have you tried local playback (VLC on your Raspberry Pi that's doing the capturing), is it smooth there? Also, what does CPU and memory usage look like when you a) play locally, b) stream RTSP over the network to your desktop/phone. These should steps should help narrow this down.
