RPi Cam Web Interface

[chiruru]

Hello Dear,
I installed this web interface on my Rpi as below.

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo rpi-update

git clone https://github.com/silvanmelchior/RPi_Cam_Web_Interface.git
cd RPi_Cam_Web_Interface
chmod u+x RPi_Cam_Web_Interface_Installer.sh
./RPi_Cam_Web_Interface_Installer.sh install

Are they all for install?
Video and Settings are appeared in firefox.
But, a few minutes later, video is stoped, It don't move and buttons are don't work in firefox.

And, In Rpi Screen, All icons are nothing,,,already disappeared!
In Putty terminal of PC, I will reboot the Rpi as below.

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sudo reboot

But It can not reboot Rpi. Something is wrong on Rpi.



First, I think that basic operation is work well.
And then i will install Pi-Pan,,,etc.

Please commant me, Please.

[jarrah31]

Hi All,

First off, thanks for making this project! It seems to work much better than any of the other solutions I've tried. I'm trying to process this video stream to control a robot, so I'm trying to use SimpleCV's built-in handling of mjpeg streams, which has a syntax that looks like this: cam = JpegStreamCamera("http://192.168.65.101:8080/videofeed") or cam = JpegStreamCamera("http://192.168.65.101:8080/video.mjpg")
Should this be able to work? If so, how should I find the correct URL for the mjpeg stream? Thanks!

Creating a symbolic link and pointing the stream to http://192.168.65.101:8080/cam.jpg should do the trick:

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sudo ln -s /run/shm/mjpeg/cam.jpg /var/www/cam.jpg

[jarrah31]

Is there any reason why rotating the image doesn't retain the same section of the image?

If I turn on the Pi, connect and set the web interface to show 4:3 Full FOV, I get one view, but if I then select "Rotation" of 90 degrees, I only see part of that view. Looks like it's cropping it to retain a landscape orientation, when really I'd like a portrait orientation of the image.

Thanks

Ahh yes I get this too - not noticed it before.

The preview window is set to landscape as you mentioned, so it would need to be coded to alter the preview window's aspect at the same time as rotating the image. Not sure if that's an easy one to fix because altering the settings doesn't refresh the webpage, so someone with coding knowledge would need to work that one out.

We could do with a wish list for Silvan, or anyone else who can program because it's all hosted on github for others to improve it with.

[jussi24]

Thanks for that very useful tool. Now I came back to it after there's the fullFOV format now available.
When taking a snapshot or performing timelapse pictures the program hangs: buttons will not be ungrayed anymore, an error report comes up after a while (something camera not responding).
Must perform a stop/start-cycle to bring it back to life.
This is true in 9 of 10 cases.
I'm not sure if this only happens when setting up a fullFOV format (tryied 4:3 and 16:9).
The same on another RASPI, set up individually. So I think it's not a single fault.
Any ideas? Need more infos?

Edit: error message is:
Error in RaspiMJPEG: Coult not set preview format
Restart RaspiMJPEG (./RPi_Cam_Web_Interface_Installer.sh start) or the whole RPi.

A part of the picture is then stored in the file.

Thanks!
Juergen

[Pangu]

Hello all. It's a long time ago I looked into this thread because I was busy on some other work. I have seen that this great tool of silvianmelchor had some improvements and upgrades. As I did re-installed my RPi from scratch I decided to install also RPI Cam Web Interface from beginning. I cloned through git the latest firmware, of course I upgraded my firmware and all the other stuff mentioned. Unfortunately I am facing some serious problems, which I can reproduce:

- my config files:
/etc/raspimjpeg
/etc/motion/motion.conf
/etc/default/motion

- raspimjpeg is up and running, see following output:

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# ps aux |grep -w "raspimjpeg\|motion"

root 27022 1.3 0.3 76408 1216 pts/2 Sl 20:15 0:11 raspimjpeg -ic 0 -vc 0

- On the web page, I see the live preview. When I click on [record video start] button, the video is recorded. But when I click on the link "Download Videos and Images" and then on the PLAY button for the recorded video, the video is played back but with stutters and delays. It looks like it was recorded with very low FPS. When I right-click on the video and save it to my hard-disk it is played correctly, that means very fluidly. Or when I click BACK and re-enter the "Download Videos and Images" site, the video is played back ok. I cannot understand why? It has nothing to do with read speed of the video file, because I waited until the video stream has completely buffered. I can click over 10x times on the PLAY button, the video will played back with stutters and low speed. Only when I click BACK and then entering the VIDEO AND IMAGES website again, the video is played-back fluidly and normal. That was not the case on my older RPi Cam Web Interface.

- Now to the more serious problem which will cause raspimjpeg to stop function
When I click on the button [record image] an image is created and recorded correctly. When I try to create a new image, then the buttons will get greyed-out and stay there. The preview image is freezed, I have no control over the web interface. Raspimjpeg process is still there when I enter "ps aux |grep -i raspimjpeg" but nothing works. The second image has 0 byte file size and raspimjpeg seems to be completely frozen. The only solution for this is:

"killall raspimjpeg" and then afterwards "./RPi_Cam_Web_Interface_Installer.sh start" to restart the process. After that the web page shows the live preview again and I can control the web interface after a refresh of the webpage.

- The same problem occurs when I click on [timelapse start]. It will generate the first image and the whole thing will freeze at the second image. The second image has again 0 byte filesize and nothing works any more. It does not solve the problem when clicking on "timelapse stop" and then "stop camera" and "start camera". I have manually to kill raspimjpeg process and restart it again as explained.

I have an addiotional question: is it possible to have an fullscreen option on the live preview ? Something like a button or similar, which will resize the live preview with FULL-FOV over the whole screen? When I look at a recorded video, there is a small icon on the bottom right (arrows). When you click on this symbol it will stretch the current video as fullscreen. I'd appreciate to have such a fullscreen view for the live preview, too.

Any help appreciated.Thanks to all.

[0lly]

The second image has 0 byte file size and raspimjpeg seems to be completely frozen. The only solution for this is:

continue reading from here
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 84#p537284

[Pangu]

continue reading from here http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 84#p537284

==>

try this Firmware by executing ...

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sudo rpi-update 8660fe5152f6353dec61422808835dbcb49fc8b2

That solved my issues. Thank you for pointing me to the right direction.

[Pangu]

is it normal that after starting the RPI Cam Web Interface with "RPi_Cam_Web_Interface_Installer.sh start" that I have two processes running:

]# ps aux |grep -i raspi
root 24052 0.0 0.4 5124 1616 pts/2 S 13:26 0:00 sudo raspimjpeg -ic 0 -vc 0
root 24054 4.3 0.3 76408 1180 pts/2 Sl 13:26 0:04 raspimjpeg -ic 0 -vc 0
root 24075 2.0 0.2 3596 860 pts/2 S+ 13:28 0:00 grep --color=auto -i raspi

???

[slabua]

Is this an issue pertinent to the kernel itself or to raspimjpeg?
Namely, should we wait for a fix in the kernel or raspimjpeg?

[ethanol100]

is it normal that after starting the RPI Cam Web Interface with "RPi_Cam_Web_Interface_Installer.sh start" that I have two processes running:
..

Yes, the scripts executes "sudo raspimjpeg -ic 0 -vc 0", which just tells sudo to executes a new process "raspimjpeg -ic 0 -vc 0" as user root. The sudo process(24052) is really only changing the "user" and the process(24054) is the only running raspimjpeg program. Usually you would see that the sudo program is running as user and the actual program as "root"(but here the script is executed as root).

[walslayer]

Hello everybody,

First of all thanks for your contribution and your excellent work.

I want to know how is it possible to send the video stream from the camera Raspberry Pi to a server (without setting the box internet) ?

Thanks !

[sodasoda]

Hello everybody,

I'm quite new to RasbperryPi and Linux

I have a fresh installation of Raspbian on my RPI model B (512)
I've intstalled RPi Cam Web Interface as described in the first message of this topic.
And all works fine exept one thing:

When "RPi Cam Web Interface" is started i have high load average, it's above 5

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pi@rPi ~ $ w
 10:07:39 up  9:29,  1 user,  load average: 5.42, 5.44, 5.42

uname -a:

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Linux rPi 3.12.18+ #677 PREEMPT Mon Apr 28 22:45:00 BST 2014 armv6l GNU/Linux

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top - 10:11:56 up  9:34,  1 user,  load average: 5.39, 5.44, 5.41
Tasks:  75 total,   1 running,  74 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.3 us,  3.4 sy,  0.0 ni, 95.9 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:    382988 total,   109004 used,   273984 free,    14388 buffers
KiB Swap:   102396 total,        0 used,   102396 free,    61076 cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S  %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                  
 2072 root      20   0 92988 1260  784 S   2.6  0.3   7:53.96 raspimjpeg                                                                               
 2686 pi        20   0  4644 1288  932 R   1.3  0.3   0:00.11 top                                                                                      
    7 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.3  0.0   0:59.98 rcu_preempt                                                                              
 2095 pi        20   0  9260 1472  888 S   0.3  0.4   0:01.19 sshd                                                                                     
    1 root      20   0  2148  748  644 S   0.0  0.2   0:03.23 init                                                                                     
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd                                                                                 
    3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:02.61 ksoftirqd/0                                                                              
    5 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0H  

I suppose that it is not normal situation, but as i've mentioned, i'm quite new to linux and RPI, so i'm asking for help.

Thank you.

[jussi24]

try this Firmware by executing ...

Code: Select all

sudo rpi-update 8660fe5152f6353dec61422808835dbcb49fc8b2

That solved my issues. Thank you for pointing me to the right direction.

This was also the reason for my problem.
Not be able to be up to date is no good feeling. What is the reason for this step down? When will it be fixed?

Thanks.

[jussi24]

Hi,
I'm in a conflict: I need a detailed and high quality video stream for real time monitoring but motion uses these pictures for it's motion detection, too. High quality pics are unnecessarily eating up CPU performance when feeded to motion.
Is there a chance that raspimjpeg creates _two_ preview images for decoupling motion from live video preview? The motion one could be erally small (e.g. 240x180) and shouldn't cost very much ressources from the video units (i guess).

Thanks!

[jussi24]

I don't know if I'm completely wrong but I observed this and I'm asking if this is the reason for big variations in fps-values when watching a live preview stream remotely.

The used web server (apache, ngnix, php-builtin) seems to deliver the created jpg as fast and as often as it can (or as requested by the viewer, here: tiny cam monitor, Android). When the scene goes darker and using night exposure, creating a jpg needs about 1-2 seconds. But I'm getting frame rates about 10 fps which is totally waste of cpu/bandwitdh because it delivers one and the same jpg up to 20 times.
Is there a chance to synchronize delivery of an image with it's creation? This should also keep the frame rate in sync, leading to a more calm and stable stream experience when watching things moving in a brighter environment.
My raspi is connected wired to the network.

[Pangu]

Now as we have the new config file /etc/raspimjpeg, how can I insert a trigger to call an own bash script which should be executed after:

- the button "record video start" or
- the button "record image" or
- the button "timelapse start" or
- the button "motion detection start" or
- when in last line of "/etc/raspimjpeg" is used: "motion_detection = true"

My goal is: I want to transfer recorded media (manually initiated recorded images, videos or timelapse images through web browser) or automatically motion triggered recorded videos after they are saved to /var/www (and mp4box finished) to a Samba (CIFS) share. Of course I could simply edit my /etc/raspimjpeg and change image_path and video_path /var/www/media to /mymount/something but:

I don't think this is a good solution, as /mymount is pointing to a remote host through OpenVPN. The throughput is not as good as saving media to localhost. I would prefer saving videos+images to localhost where I run my Raspicam, and transfer them to my remote host by my existing bash script. This script scans the directory /var/www/media/* until mp4box is finished and then moves all the *.mp4 and *.jpg files to /mymount.

In former versions of RPi Cam Web Interface I used /etc/motion/motion.conf and changed the line:
"on_event_end echo 'ca 0' > /var/www/FIFO"
to
"on_event_end echo 'ca 0' > /var/www/FIFO && /usr/local/bin/transfer2otherhost.sh"

That worked only for motion captured videos of course. Maybe I can improve that now as we are having /etc/raspimjpeg ? How could I implement a trigger ? Any help appreciated. Thanks

[chiruru]

Hi dear,

When clicked [record image], video is freeze.
that time, raspimjpeg is not work formally.

Who has any idea?

Thanks,

[slabua]

When clicked [record image], video is freeze.
that time, raspimjpeg is not work formally.

This is a recurring issue, you need to use an older kernel:

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sudo rpi-update 8660fe5152f6353dec61422808835dbcb49fc8b2

[jussi24]

I don't think this is a good solution, as /mymount is pointing to a remote host through OpenVPN. The throughput is not as good as saving media to localhost. I would prefer saving videos+images to

Why don't you do it the other way round if your connection is unstable? Tell your target computer to fetch and delete all the files on the raspi periodically when it is connected. Create a samba share for that.
Another advantage is that your RASPI can operate independently if the connection is not available. No scripts that are hanging, no mess up with the core functionality "aquiring pictures and videos".
Last not least you don't have to provide potentionally secure credentials on your raspi to connect to your server.

I'm thinking about that solution for my own. Seems to be the best way to me.

[prime1009]

Hello everybody,

First of all thanks for your contribution and your excellent work.

I want to know how is it possible to send the video stream from the camera Raspberry Pi to a server (without setting the box internet) ?

Thanks !

Hi, did you find any way? I have the same problem, because i wand to use "ZoneMInder" for the recording!

Thanks Prime1009

[bobthesheep]

HI,

Is there anyway to change stream to a full FOV? The 4:3 full POV preset only seems to show a cropped area of the sensor instead of the full FOV. I can manually set the video resolution to 2592 x 1944 and this would work, but by doing so I can't record any video (crashes when I try).

Thanks

[Pangu]

Why don't you do it the other way round if your connection is unstable? Tell your target computer to fetch and delete all the files on the raspi periodically when it is connected. Create a samba share for that.
Another advantage is that your RASPI can operate independently if the connection is not available. No scripts that are hanging, no mess up with the core functionality "aquiring pictures and videos".
Last not least you don't have to provide potentionally secure credentials on your raspi to connect to your server.

I'm thinking about that solution for my own. Seems to be the best way to me.

Thanks for your feedback, but this is not an adequate solution to me. The transfer *have to* be triggered through my RaspberryPi where the Raspicam is installed to. This is the only safe solution, that I get recorded videos or images directly to my server. Just imagine following scenario: A burglar enters the surveillance area and RPi starts to record video. After some minutes the burglar detects the camera, fully destroy it including my RaspberryPi and the MMC card (or USB). I never will get the recorded material to see what exactly happened. That's why I am transferring recorded media "immediately", that means "as fast as possible" to my remote server. This is done automatically after new video or image was recorded on the RPi. The other benefit is that I don't need much file size on RPi side, because videos and images are "moved" to my remote server and don't waste disk space on my RPi.

EDIT: Actually I have configured my setup like this --> in /etc/motion/motion.conf I am using the line "on_event_end echo 'ca 0' > /var/www/FIFO && /usr/local/bin/xfer2myserver.sh". This script is executed each time when motion was triggered and finished recording a video. My script is checking the existence of available videos and images, and waits until mp4box is finished with converting .h264 video to .mp4 video. After that, the media is transferred to my server. On this way I get recorded media as fast as possible. For those who are interested what my script looks like:

/usr/local/bin/xfer2myserver.sh

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#!/bin/bash
#
# Script /usr/local/bin/xfer2myserver written by Sloop on 06.03.2014
#
# this script is executed by a trigger of "/etc/motion/motion.conf",
# line 517, after a motion-based video has been recorded. The video
# recorded in .h264 has to be converted to .mp4 first. This script
# is checking the status of MP4Box until it finishes. Afterwards it
# moves all image and video files from the specified directory to
# my SMB/CIFS share.
#
# -------------------BEGIN------------------------

#check if already running
flagfile=/tmp/xfer2myserver.active
[[ -f $flagfile ]] && exit 0
touch $flagfile

logfile=/var/log/xfer2myserver.log
sourcedir=/var/www/media
destdir=/cifs2myserver
mp4boxps=startvalue

# redirect all output into a logfile with my custom timestamp format
exec 6>&1
exec >>$logfile
exec > >(while read -r line; do printf '%s %s\n' "$(date +'%_F %_T')" "$line"; done) 2>&1

while [ ! -z $mp4boxps ]; do
mp4boxps=$(ps axo comm | grep -i mp4box)
#sleep 5
done

while : ; do
 [ ! "$(find $sourcedir -maxdepth 1 -name '*.h264' -print -quit)" ] && break
done

# now moving the media
cat << LOGOUTPUT


++++++++++++++++++++++
  BEGIN transfer ...
++++++++++++++++++++++
LOGOUTPUT
rsync -hav --no-owner --no-g --remove-source-files $sourcedir/* $destdir/
rm -f $flagfile
exec 1>&6 6>&-

Please be patient with me, I am not a script pro writer If you have any suggestion for improvement I would be glad to hear your comments.

If you have any further questions relating to this script, please ask me. For your understanding: I have created an empty directory "/cifs2myserver" on the root of my RPi. I am mounting this directory with following options through ..

/etc/fstab

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//192.168.123.234/raspicamshare /cifs2myserver cifs credentials=/home/pi/.cifscredentials  0 0

where 192.168.123.234 is my server running samba server to which I am transferring the recorded media. The share is called "raspicamshare" and I mount this to /cifs2myserver on my RPi using the credentials which I have saved into the hidden file /home/pi/.cifscredentials with chmod 0600 so only user "pi" (and root) can read it. The content of this file looks like that:

/home/pi/.cifscredentials:

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username=rpiwebcam
password=anypassw0rd

Cheers,
Sloop.

[partach]

Hi

Just joined this forum and I am a raspberry noob in that I have just been playing with them for the last month.
Am using this webcam software and it is great! So thanks for making this!
However I am encountering a few issues I hope someone can help me with.

I have set it up and it works good during the day on 3 PIs with each a camera.
/var/www/media is nicely mounted to my Synology nas and the files are nicely stored there.

However, night conditions are bad. auto exposure can not compensate. (which is really unfortunate)
The trouble starts when setting exposure to night. In itself this works BUT if you start motion via the web interface it breaks.
The image in the web interface keeps changing exposure it seems. Also the state goes from MD_READY to BOXING, VIDEO, etc.). It will keep repeating this a few time until your get the alert (dialog telling to reset the RPi or cam software). And then mostly a reboot is needed.

I have update the firmware to the latest, did apt-get dist-upgrade and apt-get upgrade. (so should have the latest of all SW?)

I would really like to be able to use the night exposure setting as it seems to be what I want viewing it via the web interface. Only can not start motion detection then, it will not work. And I need motion detection to record stuff that happened in front of the camera. Anyone any ideas how to get this working?

What else I have learned so far:
- do not use wifi, gives all kinds of trouble (like mounting that does not work at boot, takes to long for network to be established). So all have fixed cabling.
- camera HW kit is not that sturdy. pressing the yellow sunny label helps a lot in most cases
- always shutdown your PI in a nice way: shutdown -h 0 (else it can corrupt your SD)
- always back up your SD image
- config file for raspimjpeg helps in setting up the camera nicely. (except I can not set motion to start via that config, it breaks the web interface sofware like explained above.
- can not use synology surveillance with this setup. It will not connect to port 80 and use cam.jpg. (but don't need it as with the web interface software explained here and mounting it to my nas I have a better setup (do not need extra camera licenses for synology in this way as well)
- webiopi is also great for controlling IO!
- I love the PIs, great stuff!

[0lly]

I have update the firmware to the latest, did apt-get dist-upgrade and apt-get upgrade. (so should have the latest of all SW?)

I have described the perhaps 10 times

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sudo rpi-update 8660fe5152f6353dec61422808835dbcb49fc8b2

Motion also working here.
I'm not a C programmer and recompile did not help

[partach]

I have update the firmware to the latest, did apt-get dist-upgrade and apt-get upgrade. (so should have the latest of all SW?)

I have described the perhaps 10 times

Code: Select all

sudo rpi-update 8660fe5152f6353dec61422808835dbcb49fc8b2

Motion also working here.
I'm not a C programmer and recompile did not help

Sadly this does not work for me. Tried on 2 PIs, night exposure did not even work on this firmware it seemed.
Even more frustrating on 2 PIs I can't get it two work anymore during the day as well. I continuously get "Error: Could not enable connection camera -> video converter" in the alert box. Nothing I have tried gets rid of it anymore (redo motion.conf, raspimjpeg config, etc,)... Help