PiKrellCam: motion vector detect + OSD web interface

[YvesG]

Hi @rpiatf2f10

here is what i bought: http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Pan-Tilt-Camera- ... 2150519439?
You have to assemble it by yourself and need a knife to cut/adjust few plastic parts (nothing too difficult don't worry)

Cheers
Yves

[rpiatf2f10]

HI YvesG,

thanks for the link. Do you use this in-house or outdoor? I was wondering whether people use these Servos outdoor. In that case, how it's being cased......... It would be nice to have a wiki with a section of showing how people use it in different ways.......

thanks
peng

[rpiatf2f10]

HI Guys,

I got 32G usb key attached to the PI; however, it says 'Disk 0.0B Free: 0.0B(0.0%)". Any thoughts?

I enabled "sda1" script and it seems working fine.

[email protected]:~ $ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 7.2G 1.6G 5.4G 23% /
devtmpfs 182M 0 182M 0% /dev
tmpfs 186M 0 186M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 186M 4.5M 182M 3% /run
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 186M 0 186M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 60M 21M 40M 35% /boot
/dev/sda1 29G 45M 27G 1% /home/pi/pikrellcam/media

thanks
peng

[jbeale]

I got 32G usb key attached to the PI; however, it says 'Disk 0.0B Free: 0.0B(0.0%)". Any thoughts?

I've seen that before as well, but then after rebooting the Pi and refreshing the browser, it works as expected.

[billw]

HI Guys,
I got 32G usb key attached to the PI; however, it says 'Disk 0.0B Free: 0.0B(0.0%)". Any thoughts?

There's some kind of initial condition issue. If you record a video, or just after a while with a web page reload
it should clear up. I haven't tracked down yet if this is a php caching problem or if I'm not initializing something right.

[billw]

HI YvesG,

thanks for the link. Do you use this in-house or outdoor? I was wondering whether people use these Servos outdoor. In that case, how it's being cased......... It would be nice to have a wiki with a section of showing how people use it in different ways.......

thanks
peng

It would be nice to have some examples of how people set up installations. If not a wiki then at least some links on the
help page or pikrellcam web page. I have home built outdoor servo setups and have posted some pics in the past.
What I do involves cutting PVC and electrical conduit pipe and heat gun bending a piece of window pane grade acrylic
(from Home Depot) with a heat gun to cover a cutout in a 3" PVC pipe. I glue it all together with PVC solvent/polyurethane glue.

These links show pics of the initial iteration of my installs:
viewtopic.php?p=959950#p959950
https://github.com/billw2/billw2.github ... ges/c1.jpg
(do a view image of the jpg in the second link to unrotate it)
By now I've revised the PVC case and PCB camera mount shown in the pics and I'm in the process of replacing my installs
over the next few days.

Eventually I want to have a page fully documenting what I do and want to convert to 3D printing parts of the build. I don't know
of any way to get an outside installation that does not take a fair bit of effort and time. But if somebody can find some options it
would be great!

[rpiatf2f10]

HI Billw and Jbeale,

With regard to 32G usb issue, I tried various , reboot, clear cache, etc; however, it still says "0". ...

A small feature request is that it would be nice to have available storage info on the front page; that might be nice to see it right away.

Thanks Billw and YvesG for Servos info.

[billw]

With regard to 32G usb issue, I tried various , reboot, clear cache, etc; however, it still says "0". ...

I found a bug affecting the USB disk total/free display.
Try an upgrade and restart pikrellcam and let me know if it's not fixed.

[rpiatf2f10]

HI Billw,

After upgrade, now I have correct numbers.!!!!!!!!!!! You are the man!!!!

Peng

[rpiatf2f10]

HI Billw,

In one of my early post, I mentioned that I have 5 same Pi B. With identical setting in PI and Web browser, two of PI's preview picture are a bit larger than rest of 3 PI's . The OSD zone actually is closely related to this Preview picture size. I felt that it might affect the accuracy of detection, though I haven't noticed this yet. I tried Chromium/Firefox, both are same.

A few us in the forum experienced this as well, I was wondering whether you have more than one cam to observe same effect. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance.!!!
Peng

[Gavinmc42]

What are the video and still resolutions?

Finally got around to installing a V2 as my main camera.
Was going through Pikrellcam's res options and decided 1644 x 922 gave me the best option.
I like the wider horizontal field of view with the V2 lens and don't need the vertical.
With the V1 there is no equivalent resolution of this V2 option?
It would be the 2x2 bin version, 75% height , half of 2592 x 1458 = 1296 x 729?
Er, I found it, has to be on 16 pixel boundaries 1280 x 720, the 720p option?
Hmm, it could be full width 1296, just a bit wider?

For the V2 there is no still res equivalent of the V1's 2592 x1458, for the V2 - 3280 x 1848?
2x2 bin is there, 1640 x 922, 2 times that would be 3280 x 1844?

Is this just because it is not in the blob as an option? Or no one has tested it yet?
Had a look at the userland code, it looks like you can request a height and width and the blob decides what to give you

Is there a definitive list of height, width options anywhere for the V1 and V2 ?
linux.org/Rpi_Camera_Module#Technical_Parameters_.28v.2_board.29
Reading up on what the blob does, it looks like images are cropped before compression.

Could you request 1640 x 320 and get videos/images around that size?
Am I years too late asking this question and it is in an old post somewhere?

billw, version 3.06 reports I have 94.8% free of my 1TB hard drive
Nice work again.

Finally got around to archiving, been testing on the SD cards, set to do it in the early am, about to find out if the USB drive works.
Think I should write some script to give me a daily usage, nice little plot and estimating disk full day?
Get sent an email when disk nearly full?

[billw]

In one of my early post, I mentioned that I have 5 same Pi B. With identical setting in PI and Web browser, two of PI's preview picture are a bit larger than rest of 3 PI's . The OSD zone actually is closely related to this Preview picture size. I felt that it might affect the accuracy of detection, though I haven't noticed this yet. I tried Chromium/Firefox, both are same.

I'm not sure what the effect is you are talking about. I have several cameras running but haven't noticed anything. Are you saying that for identical mjpeg_width settings the preview images in the browser are not mjpeg_width for some of them? Or is it that the apparent field of view is different?

You can right click on the browser preview image and Save Image As (if Firefox). Then run identify on the saved jpg to get its pixel size.
Then run identify on /run/pikrellcam/mjpeg.jpg on the Pi that the browser is connected to. The sizes should be the same and should be the configured mjpeg_width.

[billw]

What are the video and still resolutions?
...
Could you request 1640 x 320 and get videos/images around that size?
Am I years too late asking this question and it is in an old post somewhere?

The OSD config just has a set of resolutions intended to cover typical use cases. If you want to experiment with various other resolutions, stop pikrellcam, edit the resolution you want in pikrellcam.conf, and restart.

For example, if you set video_width 1640 and video_height 320 you will get that size of videos recorded. However, the preview image shown on the web page might be distorted scaled (reload the page might fix it) and if you bring up on the OSD "Video Res", it will be confused.

[rpiatf2f10]

HI Billw,

In order to upload files with smaller size, I reduced file size with lower resolutions of these two screen captures.

You can see, that with all settings of PI and browser equal, one preview is larger than the other one.

Thanks
peng

[billw]

In order to upload files with smaller size, I reduced file size with lower resolutions of these two screen captures.

You can see, that with all settings of PI and browser equal, one preview is larger than the other one.

Can you double check the mjpeg_width setting in ~/.pikrellcam/pikrellcam.conf on each of your Pi's?

The top screenshot looks like mjpeg_width is 640 and the bottom looks like it is 800. It makes a difference when you installed each one because I recently changed the default to 800 and so for an earlier install the config value would still be remembered as 640 even though the default is now 800. For different date installs, this would have happened without your editing anything. Motion region values are fractions of the screen size, so while there can be slight round off shifts when changing mjpeg_width, I haven't noticed that being a problem.

I've also now reduced the mjpeg_qualilty default to 10 which may be lower than what you have configured. You might consider lowering that to 10 or even lower especially for a change from 640 width to 800 otherwise the preview jpg size goes up and it will eat more bandwidth. But that's a tuning up to you. For my use, I've sort of settled on a mjpeg_quality as low as 5 because I have several camera installs and when I'm away from home I need a lower bandwidth usage.

[rpiatf2f10]

Hi Billw,

Indeed, it's mjpeg_width that has different value... Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peng

[nitschkecm]

Hi,

I have just installed and so far it runs like a charm. I was wondering if somebody has implemented an email trigger which is easy to implement. I would like to have and email sent in case of a motion event, if possible with the thumbnail generated.
Many thanks for the hint!

[billw]

I have just installed and so far it runs like a charm. I was wondering if somebody has implemented an email trigger which is easy to implement. I would like to have and email sent in case of a motion event, if possible with the thumbnail generated.
Many thanks for the hint!

Until now you could email the preview jpeg, but I just put an upgrade up that adds the option to email the thumb jpeg instead.

Two steps:
1) edit ~/.pikrellcam/pikrellcam.conf and enable (uncomment) the on_motion_preview_save command. If you have not yet restarted after the upgrade, there will be no $A at the end of the commented command - in that case, uncomment and add a $A to the end.
If you have already uncommented that command, you need to add the $A to the end of it if you want the thumb filename to be passed to the preview_save script.

2) Manually copy ~/pikrellcam/scripts-dist/preview_save into ~/pikrellcam/scripts/preview_save (maybe back up scripts/preview_save first?) and edit it to set your email address, uncomment which jpeg you want to email, and uncomment the mpack line.

If you have current preview_save script customizations, just look at scripts-dist/preview_save to see what you need to do if you want to email the thumb instead of the preview.

Oh, and step 3, restart pikrellcam.

[nitschkecm]

Hi, worked like a charm !!!

one more question: Has anybody integrated this with the Synolgoy Surveillance Station and what are the parameters used.
Thanks in advance!

[BerryPicker]

If one video recording stops because the time limit is exceeded, the following recording overlapps the previous, and initially replays smoothly, but after about 8 seconds there are lost frames causing the replay to jump ahead by leaps of about 10 seconds. Is this because the pi is busy boxing the first recording whilst trying to capture the second? If so, is it best to turn off boxing, and do it later as needed?

[billw]

If one video recording stops because the time limit is exceeded, the following recording overlapps the previous, and initially replays smoothly, but after about 8 seconds there are lost frames causing the replay to jump ahead by leaps of about 10 seconds. Is this because the pi is busy boxing the first recording whilst trying to capture the second? If so, is it best to turn off boxing, and do it later as needed?

Boxing by itself shouldn't cause large lapses like that unless there's something else going on like memory usage is maxing out and your pi is swapping. Just a guess though. I'll look into it some more to make sure it's not something pikrellcam is doing wrong, but it will be a few days since I'm traveling right now.

[jbeale]

If one video recording stops because the time limit is exceeded, the following recording overlaps the previous, and initially replays smoothly, but after about 8 seconds there are lost frames causing the replay to jump ahead by leaps of about 10 seconds.

I have seen something like this a few times as well. I haven't investigated what triggers it.

[BerryPicker]

I'll look into it some more to make sure it's not something pikrellcam is doing wrong.

Thank you billw. Other follow-on recording funnies I've seen are the thumb showing motion region frames with some motion data, and a post capture time cut short.

[boomlikethat]

Hey all,

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I can't seem to be able to get to my PiKrellCam interfaces from outside my local network.

Could someone give this noob some help? I've tried port forwarding on my router, etc. but can't make it work.

Any info you need, please let me know. Both of my Pi's are connected directly through Ethernet, no wireless connection.

Thanks!

[jbeale]

can't seem to be able to get to my PiKrellCam interfaces from outside my local network.

Do you mean from a larger subnet, or that you want to get in from anywhere on the internet? Normally your router's NAT (address translation) does not make your Pi visible to the world, so first you need to figure out your IP address as seen from the outside, and also if your ISP allows traffic to whatever port you're forwarding to the Pi.

Even before that though, please consider your security plan... It's not something I've tried myself, because without considerable thought and preparation I know a whole network can be "owned" just boom... like that.