Raspberry Pi Camera Setup - Motion detected movie creation (obsolete)

THIS PAGE IS OBSOLETE - PLEASE CONTINUE READING HERE: Home Automation with Raspberry Pi

This article describes the setup of the Raspberry Pi Camera with motion to take pictures on motion. If you want to see, how you make a time-lapse movie rather than a motion-triggered, see Raspberry Pi Camera Setup for Time-Lapse!

Setup

Get package list

apt-get update

Update all packages

apt-get upgrade

Enable the camera

raspi-config

Then answer the following stupid questions ("really enable?" and "reboot now?"), and you're done.

Configuration

Now we've set up drivers, we need to verknuspel the Raspi Cam with motion. That is a bit tricky, since motion does not support the Raspi Cam. But it supports webcams. So we need to convert our Raspi Cam into a webcam.

Make the Pi take pictures

Make PiCam Device accessible

Since /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ is the default CGI-directory...

• make sure, everyone can access the camera device:

chmod o+rwx /dev/vchiq 

Setup script for taking a picture

• create a folder named webcam:

cd /usr/lib/cgi-gbin
mkdir webcam
chown pi webcam

• create this script named webcam.cgi:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Content-type: image/jpeg"
echo ""
#
# timeout should not be 0, since images will be to dark and are noisy
#raspistill --nopreview -t 1 -w 1024 -h 768 -o -
# 
# Since my cam is mounted wrong, I prefer to flip it :)
raspistill --nopreview -t 1 -w 1024 -h 768 -o - | convert - -flip -
#
#raspistill -t 0 -w 1024 -h 768 -o -
exit 0

* Make it executable

chmod +x webcam.cgi

This won't work very reliably, because this will occur:

stdout: mmal: mmal_vc_component_enable: failed to enable component: ENOSPC
mmal: camera component couldn't be enabled
mmal: main: Failed to create camera component
mmal: Failed to run camera app. Please check for firmware updates

No solution yet, so I decided to don't let motion execute the cgi, but crond:

• create this script named takePicture.sh:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Globals
#
GFOLDERTARGET="/var/www/webcam"
GFILELOCK="${GFOLDERTARGET}/takePicture.lck"
GFILELOCKAGEMAX="60"
#
#
#
# Main
#
# Check locking
if [ -f "${GFILELOCK}" ]; then
  LOCKFILEAGE="`stat --format=\"%Z\" \"${GFILELOCK}\"`"
  NOW="`date +'%s'`"
  AGE="`expr ${NOW} - ${LOCKFILEAGE}`"
  if [ "${AGE}" -gt "${GFILELOCKAGEMAX}" ]; then
     echo "Lockfile is ${AGE} seconds old, removing it."
     rm "${GFILELOCK}"
  else
     echo "Lockfile is ${AGE} seconds old, exiting."
     exit 1
  fi
fi
#
#
# Lock
echo $$ > "${GFILELOCK}"
#
# timeout should not be 0, since images will be to dark and are noisy
# Since my cam is mounted wrong, I prefer to flip it :) (and flop it)
raspistill --nopreview -w 1024 -h 768 -o - | convert - -flip -flop - > "${GFOLDERTARGET}/lastsnap.tmp"
mv "${GFOLDERTARGET}/lastsnap.tmp" "${GFOLDERTARGET}/lastsnap.jpg"
#
# Unlock
rm "${GFILELOCK}"
#
# Exit
exit 0

• create a folder named webcam:

cd /var/www
mkdir webcam
chown pi webcam

Setup script for taking pictures

• create this script named takePictures.sh:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Globals
GSNAPSHOTSPERMINUTE=4
GSNAPSHOTINTERVAL="`expr 60 / 4`"
#
# Main
#for i in {0.."${GSNAPSHOTSPERMINUTE}"..1} # fail
#for i in {0..4..1} # works
for ((i=1; i<=${GSNAPSHOTSPERMINUTE}; i++)) 
do
  TIMEBEFORESNAPSHOT="`date +'%s'`"
  echo "Taking snapshot at `date`"
  /home/pi/Development/motion_webcam/takePicture.sh
  TIMEAFTERSNAPSHOT="`date +'%s'`"
  DURATIONOFSNAPSHOT="`expr ${TIMEAFTERSNAPSHOT} - ${TIMEBEFORESNAPSHOT}`"
  if [ "${DURATIONOFSNAPSHOT}" -lt "${GSNAPSHOTINTERVAL}" ]; then
     DELAY="`expr ${GSNAPSHOTINTERVAL} - ${DURATIONOFSNAPSHOT}`"
     echo "Sleeping for ${DELAY} seconds."
     sleep ${DELAY}
  fi
done

• Add this to pi's crontab:

# PiCam
* * * * *       /home/pi/Development/motion_webcam/takePictures.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

Check if it works

• The snapshot: http://YOUR_PI_S_IPA/cgi-bin/webcam/webcam.cgi
• The snapshot: http://192.168.1.105/webcam/lastsnap.jpg (change to your Pi's IPA!)
• The motion archive: http://192.168.1.105/webcam-archive (change to your Pi's IPA!)

Get motion to check 'em

Install motion

apt-get install motion

Configure motion

Edit /etc/motion/motion.conf:

netcam_url http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/webcam/webcam.cgi
netcam_url http://127.0.0.1/webcam/lastsnap.jpg

and

target_dir /var/www/webcam-archive

and

width 1024

and

height 768

and

framerate 2

and

minimum_frame_time 0

Don't forget to relaunch motion:

root@raspberrypi:/etc/motion# /etc/init.d/motion restart

How do the scripts work?

• The takePictures.sh script will be fired every minute and will take, launching takePicture.sh a picture avery 15 seconds (4 per minute)
• motion will check the change of the created lastsnap.jpg and…
  • …will create a movie
  • …will create a nicly named set of images as archive of the stills

---

• Links
  • FAQ
  • http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=43844
  • https://www.modmypi.com/blog/installing-the-raspberry-pi-camera-board
• Footnotes: