RPi Cam Web Interface

[Deepak Mishra]

How do you remove some features from the webpage. I dont want some features to be shown on the webpage. need only some of the features. Which html page do I have to edit. Anyone help ?

[btidey]

How do you remove some features from the webpage. I dont want some features to be shown on the webpage. need only some of the features. Which html page do I have to edit. Anyone help ?

The standard software supports four levels of view which can depend on the user login if used. These are explained in the wiki under 'User Access levels' in section Additions and tricks.

If you want to customise it yourself then

index.php controls the main page with live preview, control buttons and settings.

preview.php controls the download page to view and download previous recordings

schedule.php controls the scheduler page.

If you are trying to remove buttons or settings from the main page then these sections can be commented out in the index.php file.

[Kaushik]

Hi,
Does RPi cam web interface + motion detection work with pizero?
For me it always crashes the kernel with in a couple hours of running. I use internal motion detection.

Here are the contents of file uconfig:
annotation %h:%m:%s %c %f
exposure_mode night
MP4Box 0
motion_external 0

The exact same sd card works perfectly on raspberry pi 2 device.

Any advice?
K

[oldjake]

@Kaushik

Funny you should say that. I have one running on a Pi Zero and it's rock solid. Until I had to take the Pi down because I changed routers, it had been running for weeks with no problems.

However, on my Pi 3b+ it seems to crash with a kernel panic every time I try to do anything through the interface. First the camera freezes but I can access the other screens. As soon as I try to stop the camera or reboot through the system settings, it crashes. I tried swapping the card with another Pi 3b that I have which was stable and it does the same thing. I can only assume that it's a hardware issue with the camera board or the Pi. I've got a new 3b+ just arrived to eliminate that.

[btidey]

4 out of my 5 deployed camera run on Pi Zero (original) using USB to LAN interfaces and they have never crashed. They are in use 24/7 and have been running for several years now. Only down time has been during power cut or when updating software. I also run dev cameras on Pi2 and 3b without seeing problems.

I do take care on power supply arrangements making sure that there is a solid 5V at the Pi modules. Most of the deployed camera are powered over Ethernet with a local buck converter tied straight into the GPIO connector power pins. If powering with the standard USB cable you must make sure its resistance is low (normally short thick cables). Many regular USB cables can have resistances greater than 0.5 Ohm and the extra load caused by the camera can then cause voltage dips leading to instability.

[Kaushik]

Thanks oldjake. Could it be a hardware issue? I have to say, the csi connector's lock that seats the camera cable broke. I simply attached it and taped it with a scotch tape. But it works. I can run raspivid all day and recording will happen.
It is only this rpi cam web interface+motion detection that is crashing the kernel.

I will try to isolate the issue. I am inclined or hope it is a software issue. I am seeing that the internal motion detection (1010 noise level) the filtered changes %c is consistently higher on the pi0 - often 400 plus -- while on the pi2 it is more moderate and consistently lower around 10 to 300. This consistent high level is triggering constant video recording. This happens more in the dark even with exposure mode set to auto, night or nightpreview.
I will suspect the constant video capture on and off is creating some issues on the pi0. It happens whether video is written to sd card itself or to an external usb drive(whether ntfs/ext4/fat).

( I assume we should use jessie. Though I have tried with stretch also as that is what I normally use. )

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 4.9.35-v7+ #1014 SMP Fri Jun 30 14:47:43 BST 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="8"
VERSION="8 (jessie)"
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

Still, I would like to see if it works on the pi zero for everyone with the latest rpi web cam and jessie.
Any case, I will order another pi zero and then check.

[Kaushik]

Hi btidey,
Thanks. I think my power cables and adapters are good. Thick and bought from a reputed place that sells a lot of rpis. I will keep this in mind though.

So, it appears the latest code on jessie does work fine. Something not right at my end. So, a new pizero is the next step I guess.
K

[hang12]

I recorded a short timelapse but it does not work

In the log it is all ok :

Code: Select all

[2017/12/21 20:12:09] start lapse convert:(gst-launch-1.0 -v multifilesrc location=/var/www/html/media/t0003/i_%05d.jpg caps=\"image/jpeg,framerate=\(fraction\)30/1\" ! jpegdec ! queue ! videoscale ! video/x-raw ! queue ! omxh264enc target-bitrate=15000000 control-rate=variable ! video/x-h264, profile=high ! h264parse ! mp4mux ! filesink location=/var/www/html/media/tl_0003_0001_20171221_201122.mp4 ; rm -rf /var/www/html/media/t0003;) >/dev/null 2>&1 &
[2017/12/21 20:12:09] Convert finished

but you can not see the video in the "Download videos and image" section, i see only a single frame.

Looks like there may be an issue with gstreamer and stretch. It certainly works with jessie. A quick test with stretch here did not work, and there are some reports of gstreamer problems with stretch.

Under investigation.

Same here with Stretch, RPi Cam Control 6.4.30 and ffmpeg 3.2.10-1~deb9u1+rpt2: Creating the video finishes the same second it was started -> Impossible, since t0000 contains 160 images.

Code: Select all

[2018/10/08 18:02:24] start lapse convert:(/usr/bin/ffmpeg -f image2 -framerate 15 -i /var/www/html/picam/media/t0000/i_%05d.jpg -c:v h264_omx -r 15 -b:v 2500k/var/www/html/picam/media/tl_0000_0001_20181007_224325.mp4 ; ) >/dev/null 2>&1 &
[2018/10/08 18:02:24] Convert finished

What I noticed in above log: There's a space missing in front of the video filename. Just adding an extra space to convertCmd.txt does not result in the extra space being present in the log output.

If I run the command as shown above in the log (missing space) on the console, ffmpeg complains:

Code: Select all

Input #0, image2, from '/var/www/html/picam/media/t0000/i_%05d.jpg':
  Duration: 00:00:10.73, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 1920x1080, 15 fps, 15 tbr, 15 tbn, 15 tbc
At least one output file must be specified

If I run the command including the extra space manually on the console, the video is created.

Any solution to this? Could it be that the missing space is the culprit?

[oldjake]

@Kaushik

So, my Pi 3B+ was the unstable one, crashing after anything between a few minutes and several hours. On Saturday I turned off motion detection, deleted the MD 1 from the schedule and let it alone. It's now been running stable since then.

My Pi Zero, with motion detection running, has also been running fine.

Both have been updated

As a process of elimination, you might want to try turning motion detection off if you haven't already.

[oldjake]

@btidey

Tried your idea of entering the 25 in the recording and boxing fields and that's done the trick for me in terms of the playback speed.

Weird!

[Kaushik]

As a process of elimination, you might want to try turning motion detection off if you haven't already.

@Oldjake, The problem exists only when motion detection is on. I am quite sure something is wrong with motion detection.

Even on the 'good' pi (rpi 2 model b), where there is no kernel crash, I see strange behavior - If motion detection on, the video's brightness goes haywire. Every few seconds the video goes dark and then bright and then dark again. This keeps happening. There is no crash though.

On the pi where I had broken the csi connector latch:
same issue ( the video's brightness changes constantly when motion detection on) and ALSO the "the filtered changes occurring by frames' goes up really high. After a couple of hours kernel crash. All this only when motion detection on. Else it runs fine.

So, definitely there is something not right with motion detection.

[Kaushik]

So, definitely there is something not right with motion detection.

In fact, so far there is only one set up in which everything works:
A raspberry pi 1 with stretch installed, kernel version "Linux picam 4.14.62+ #1134".
The rpi cam web interface code is on an older commit -

commit 7071b617311c52f6236319feb0cfb6309ceb8068
Author: roberttidey <robert"tideys.net>
Date: Sat Aug 25 21:29:25 2018 +0100

I haven't update to the latest commit 3f814b3. Though I really doubt the issue has anything to do with commit 3f814b3 as the changes seem harmless. Never the less I don't want to disturb this setup as that is running on my door entrance.

[Gary Littlemore]

I'd been running Jessie since I first installed this great software and if I remember rightly I had a 5 second buffer and any motion detection would go back to the buffer size (5 seconds).

I've now done a fresh install with Stretch and it doesn't seem to be adding the 5 second buffer to motion detection. Have I missed a setting when doing the new install? I have the 5000 option on the 'Buffer'.

[Gary Littlemore]

I've just watched the 'PJ Evans - Cooling Nemo || Day One || Raspberry Fields 2018' - https://youtu.be/q9Ob0JXHNMg video, now I'm not a coder so don't know how hard it would be but is this something that the RPi Cam could be integrated with https://wozzit.org

[stricken_1001]

Hello all, I've done the installation with my port at 80 and with a subfolder of html. I'm trying to import the feed into a python script (specifically using cv2) for a project that involves machine learning. I love the fact that the feed time has almost no lag compared to other methods i.e. vnc, etc... Here is what I've tried so far, and here is the error message I've recieved from the current url. The next two continued to load and nothing happened in my shell once executing my program. I'm using python3 and cv2.

Code: Select all

import urllib.request
import cv2
import numpy as np
url = 'http://10.2.40.243/html/index.php'
#url='http://10.2.40.243/html/cam_pic_new.php?time=1539223626791&pDelay=40000'
#url='http://10.2.40.243/html/cam_pic_new.php?time=1539221178454&pDelay=40000.jpeg'
#url='http://10.2.40.243:80/cam.jpeg' not even close 
while True:

    imgResp=urllib.request.urlopen(url)
    imgNp=np.array(bytearray(imgResp.read()),dtype=np.uint8)
    img=cv2.imdecode(imgNp,-1)
    cv2.imshow('test',img)
    if ord('q')==cv2.waitKey(10):
        exit(0)

Here is the first url using the default preview/video page
cv2.error: OpenCV(3.4.3) C:\projects\opencv-python\opencv\modules\highgui\src\window.cpp:356: error: (-215:Assertion failed) size.width>0 && size.height>0 in function 'cv::imshow'

[Kaushik]

cv2.error: OpenCV(3.4.3) C:\projects\opencv-python\opencv\modules\highgui\src\window.cpp:356: error: (-215:Assertion failed) size.width>0 && size.height>0 in function 'cv::imshow'

This is not related to Rpi cam web interface. It has something to do with the way you are calling opencv. If I remember, this error happens when a null image array is passed to imshow. Check your imshow call.

[hang12]

What I noticed in above log: There's a space missing in front of the video filename. Just adding an extra space to convertCmd.txt does not result in the extra space being present in the log output.

If I run the command as shown above in the log (missing space) on the console, ffmpeg complains:

Code: Select all

Input #0, image2, from '/var/www/html/picam/media/t0000/i_%05d.jpg':
  Duration: 00:00:10.73, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg, yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 1920x1080, 15 fps, 15 tbr, 15 tbn, 15 tbc
At least one output file must be specified

If I run the command including the extra space manually on the console, the video is created.

Issue solved with 6.4.31, see https://github.com/silvanmelchior/RPi_C ... issues/445

[btidey]

Latest version has a feature request added to the download / preview page.

2 buttons allow selected captures to be locked and unlocked. Locked captures are read only and won't be deleted or purged. You can see which captures are locked as their thumbnails do not have a little delete button.

[Gary Littlemore]

Latest version has a feature request added to the download / preview page.

2 buttons allow selected captures to be locked and unlocked. Locked captures are read only and won't be deleted or purged. You can see which captures are locked as their thumbnails do not have a little delete button.

Amazing, thank you Robert.

[Kaushik]

Latest version has a feature request added to the download / preview page.

2 buttons allow selected captures to be locked and unlocked. Locked captures are read only and won't be deleted or purged. You can see which captures are locked as their thumbnails do not have a little delete button.

Yes that is nice. On a related notes, one small problem I faced is: You do a delete all. And then you do a refresh (F5). It does a delete all again. Perhaps this was intended But it seems a bit unexpected.

[btidey]

Yes that is nice. On a related notes, one small problem I faced is: You do a delete all. And then you do a refresh (F5). It does a delete all again. Perhaps this was intended But it seems a bit unexpected.

I think that might be browser dependent. The deleteAll submits a form action. If the browser repeats the form action on F5 then it would repeat. Some browsers will warn user about a form resubmit like on my standard Windows Chrome.

[pootle]

Just a small gotcha with the installation instructions on elinux.org:

If the camera is not enabled when you run install, it tries to enable the camera from user level (assuming you don't add sudo on the front of "./install.sh"), this fails, and then you get non stop rude messages from the server.

Yes if you rtfm it does say enable the camera first, but.......

The rest of the install appears to work OK, 'cos separately enabling the camera via raspi-config fixes the problem. Perhaps installation instructions should put the bit about enabling camera in bold?

[btidey]

Just a small gotcha with the installation instructions on elinux.org:

If the camera is not enabled when you run install, it tries to enable the camera from user level (assuming you don't add sudo on the front of "./install.sh"), this fails, and then you get non stop rude messages from the server.

Yes if you rtfm it does say enable the camera first, but.......

The rest of the install appears to work OK, 'cos separately enabling the camera via raspi-config fixes the problem. Perhaps installation instructions should put the bit about enabling camera in bold?

Done. Thanks for the suggestion.

[oldjake]

How long should it take to convert a timelapse sequence?

I only tried it for the first time this morning. It captured 198 frames. It's been going for quite a while now and still says "Busy". I just wondered how long to expect it to take.

I guess it depends on the resolution but I'm just after an idea.

Cheers
Andy

[btidey]

How long should it take to convert a timelapse sequence?

I only tried it for the first time this morning. It captured 198 frames. It's been going for quite a while now and still says "Busy". I just wondered how long to expect it to take.

I guess it depends on the resolution but I'm just after an idea.

Cheers
Andy

Note that the screen does not refresh the busy status when the conversion completes. Try going out of download and back in again to see if still busy.

ffmpeg time lapse conversion is slower than the previous gstreamer version which utilised the GPU and was significantly faster. Unfortunately that got broken by an OS update which did not have all gstreamer components updated. I'll have another look to see if that can be got going again.