Raspberry PI webcam

Turn a raspberry 2 into a small webcam that provide pictures.
The goal is to setup an USB webcam on a Raspberry and to take picture on a cyclic way.
The solution is able to transfer the picture to a remote directory (on a web server for example).

You need

Raspberry 2
cheap USB webcam

100% Complete

Sources

Epinglé

A blogs for the raspberry

Thingiverse

MakerBot's Thingiverse is a thriving design community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things.

Setting the raspberry

First of all, you need to grab and install NOOB. There are so many tutorial on that point that I don't want to describe how to do it. Please refer to the source page of the project on raspberrypi.org

Set time

Set the time with a cron job :

sudo crontab -e

and add the line :

# Mise a jour de l'horloge
0 */1 * * * ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Install fswebcam

sudo apt-get fswebcam

Make a script to take pictures cyclically and send this picture to a remote machine, create a file /home/pi/.fswebcam.conf with :

resolution 800x600
jpeg 95
delay 5
title "FabLab UBO"
subtitle "Ultimaker"
info "Webcam Raspberry Pi"
timestamp "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S"
set brightness=50%
set contrast=50%
skip 2
save /home/pi/Pictures/viewcam.jpg
exec /home/pi/Pictures/command.sh
loop 10

Note that this script will execute the file command.sh in

the directory /home/pi/Pictures

Transfer picture to an other server

SCP can copy a file over secure access. We will implement a solution using ssh keys just because the batch file is not enabled to enter a password :-)

Install ssh in the remote (and local machine) :

sudo apt-get install ssh

Generate keys with the command (public and private key will be stored in the .ssh directory) :

ssh-keygen -t dsa -b 1024 -f ~/.ssh/YourRemoteServerName

Transfer the public key to the remote server :

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/YourRemoteServerName YourRemoteUser@YourRemoteServerName

Create the command.sh script that will use our key and transfer the picture to the remote server :

scp -i /home/pi/.ssh/YourRemoteServerName /home/pi/Pictures/viewcam.jpg YourRemoteUser@YourRemoteServerName:/var/www/html/webcam/pictures

Make the script executable :

sudo chmod 755 command.sh

Now you have a standalone raspberry who can take pictures and send them to another machine. Let's make a webserver's page to display this picture on internet.

To execute our script, in a terminal just enter the command line (Ctrl-C to stop it) :

fswebcam -c /home/pi/.fswebcam.conf

If you are looking for a solution that works on bootup to the console , take a look at this link . Basic rundown:

Create a file for your startup script and write your script in the file. As the script is in the init.d directory, it have to have a specific header to respond with the runtime dependencies :

sudo cp /etc/init.d/skeleton /etc/init.d/autostart.sh

sudo vi /etc/init.d/autostart.sh

... and paste the above command line at the end :

# Execute the script fswebcam as "pi" user

su - pi -c "fswebcam -c /home/pi/.fswebcam.conf"

Make the script executable:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/autostart.sh

sudo update-rc.d autostart.sh defaults

Configuring a page to display picture

100% Complete

Please, note that this tutorial will not deal how to setup a LAMP.

As we have seen before (see "command.sh"), the picture is transfered in a directory name /var/www/html/webcam/pictures, so the PHP script will display this picture and reload it every minute (60 seconds).

Here is the index.html :

<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>My beautiful webcam</title>

</body>
</html>

Making a box for your Raspberry Pi 3

100% Complete

You can grab the box I used for this raspberry here : http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:922740

Configuring Raspberry WIFI network

100% Complete

This tutorial show you how to setup your Raspbian WIFI in command line

You need

Raspberry with raspbian

Of course, you can setup your WIFI with the GUI in your Rapberry by following the Foundation Guidelines https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/README.md but, this is the way to setup manualy your WIFI network.

To scan for WIFI network, enter the command :

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

The name of the WIFI (the SSID) is a line starting with ESSID:"YourWIFINetwork"

Edit the network configuration etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf :

WIFI interface is eth0 (wlan0 is for your wired network), so locate the line iface eth0 inet dhcp and change it as root to :

network={
ssid="YourWIFINetwork"
psk="Your_wifi_password"
}

Restart the network :

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Define your Rapberry hostname :

sudo raspi-config

Go in Advanced option > Hostname and enter what you want

Done

You can see if your setting have been update with the command (it will display the @IP you enter before in the wlan0 part):

ifconfig wlan0

Problems encountered :

No @IP on WIFI (command ifconfig wlan0 give no IP address):

Maybe you have a hard coded IP in a previous config, check the end of the /etc/dhcpd.conf file and comment (or delete) the SSID you may have here.

Raspberry PI webcam

You need

Epinglé

Thingiverse

Setting the raspberry

Set time

Install fswebcam

Transfer picture to an other server

Configuring a page to display picture

Making a box for your Raspberry Pi 3

Configuring Raspberry WIFI network

You need

Problems encountered :

Other projects in this section