Raspberry Pi WebCam with 3G (Solarcam)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
The Idea
- Use solar panel to harvest energy
- Store the energy in a left over car battery
- Power a Pi, camera and
3G-StickMobile HotSpot[1] - Make a nice webcam out of it :)
Shopping List
- A Pi with camera :)
- A mobile Hotspot (I used a Huawei E1750C). Because getting an UMTS-Stick getting to work with an Pi sucks. Additionally you can easily join the WiFi network for maintenance)
- SIM Card
- (used) Car battery, in my case an 74Ah battery with one dead cell
- Solar panel (12V, 30W eBay around 40€) NOTE: Might be to small!
- Solar charger (f.e. "10A 12V/24V PWM solar panel regler solarpanel" @ ebay for around 15€)
- more to come…
How To
Update your Pi to the latest Linux version
See https://www.datenreise.de/raspberry-pi-raspbian-linux-wheezy-jessie-upgrade/
Scripts
Scripts running on the Pi
Script: Take picture every minute
Add this to crontab:
* * * * * /home/pi/Development/webcam/takePicture.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
Add a file named takePicture.sh to ~/Development/webcam/ with this contents:
TBD TBD TBD
Scripts running on the web server
cronjobs
# m h dom mon dow command 02,17,32,47 * * * * ~/bin/movePictures.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1 # # Create a daily time-lapse 50 23 * * * ~/bin/mergeAllPicturesInOneAnimatedGIF.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1
Scripts
movePictures.sh
#!/bin/bash #set -x # movePictures.sh # Author: Heiko # Purpose: Move files into place (Webserver), set lastsnap and delete old files... # Globals GFOLDERWWW="/var/www/html/solarcam" GFOLDERWWWIMAGES="${GFOLDERWWW}/webcam-archive" GFILEWWWLASTSNAP="${GFOLDERWWW}/webcam/lastsnap.jpg" GFILEWWWLASTGRAPH="${GFOLDERWWW}/webcam/lastgraph.svg" GHOME="/home/solarcam" # Move the image in place mv "${GHOME}/tmp/"*.jpg "${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}/" mv "${GHOME}/tmp/"*.svg "${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}/" # Make the newest "lastsnap" FILENEWEST="`ls -Art \"${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}\" | grep jpg | tail -1`" cp -p "${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}/${FILENEWEST}" "${GFILEWWWLASTSNAP}" FILENEWEST="`ls -Art \"${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}\" | grep svg | tail -1`" cp -p "${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}/${FILENEWEST}" "${GFILEWWWLASTGRAPH}" # Cleanup: Delete all files older than n*24hrs find "${GFOLDERWWWIMAGES}" -ctime +30 -delete # EOF
mergeAllPicturesInOneAnimatedGIF.sh
#!/bin/bash set -x # # Script: mergeAllPicturesInOneAnimatedGIF.sh # Author: Heiko Kretschmer # Purpose: Merge all .jpg into one animated .gif # # History: # 2014-03-30, 09:52, h: Creation. Note. default ticks in -delay is n/100 of a second # 2018-03-31, 08:11, h: Moved to dt. Make daily GIF. # # Globals # GFOLDERSOURCE="/var/www/html/solarcam/webcam-archive" GSUFFIXSOURCE="jpg" GTIMESTAMP="`date +'%Y-%m-%d'`" #GTIMESTAMP="2018-03-29" #echo "${GTIMESTAMP}" #exit 0 GFILETARGET="/var/www/html/solarcam/webcam-archive/${GTIMESTAMP}.gif" # (Un)Main # convert -limit area 0 -delay 25 -loop 1 "${GFOLDERSOURCE}/${GTIMESTAMP}*.${GSUFFIXSOURCE}" "${GFILETARGET}"
index.php
Tips
- Remember that this Pi is in the wild and easily stolen or all the data read
- Don't use your usual passwords for this project
- Don't store keys on the Pi
- Let your master server fetch the data (so no private keys are stored on the Pi) or use a chroot environment
- Create a special user to access the data from remote, or even better, get it per HTTP and use .htaccess for privacy (and less 3G-traffic ;) )
- If your WiFi connection breaks regularly, see Raspberry Pi WiFi issue (Solarcam)
?
- Links
- ↑ Since setting up the 3G-Stick was a pain in...