Shanto Roy

I Explore Research, Tech, Travel, and Business. PhD Student @UHCS.

2 minute read

We often need to monitor the outside of our home or to check activities of children inside a room.

In this post, I am going to demonstrate a simple Raspberry Pi project that uses any webcam to provide the option for live monitoring.

Installation

First, you will have to install an OS in the Raspberry Pi. You can choose any and flush that in a MicroSD card. Check my other post where I have provided the details of doing so.

Install Raspbian OS in Raspberry Pi without Keyboard and Monitor

Find IP address

Now, if you have connected your Raspberry Pi to your home network, we will have to obtain the IP address of the Pi. We can simply use the nmap or any other IP scanner tool to find the IP address of the Pi.

$ sudo nmap -sP 10.0.0.0/24

Or if you are using a monitor, then skip it and avoid the following step (SSH) as well.

SSH into the Pi

Now, if you have your IP address, just SSH into the system.

$ ssh -p 2222 pi@10.0.0.25

Installation

Install motion, which provides the option for live monitoring.

$ sudo apt-get install motion

Find Webcam

Connect a webcam to the raspberry pi and find the webcam using the command lsusb.

$ lsusb

Configure Motion

Now, we will have to configure motion. Let’s open the file in an editor.

$ sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

Now, change the following configurations:

  • Make sure ‘daemon’ is ON.
  • framerate $\rightarrow$ 1000 to 1500.
  • Stream_port $\rightarrow$ 8081.
  • Stream_quality $\rightarrow$ 100.
  • Stream_localhost $\rightarrow$ OFF.
  • webcontrol_localhost $\rightarrow$ OFF.
  • quality $\rightarrow$ 100.
  • width & height $\rightarrow$ 640 & 480.
  • post_capture $\rightarrow$ 5.

Press ctrl + x to exit. Type y to save and enter to conform.

Now, open the following file and configure as follows:

$ sudo nano /etc/default/motion
  • start_motion_daemon $\rightarrow$ yes

Running Motion

Use the following commands to run motion

$ sudo service motion restart
$ sudo motion
[444040:motion] [NTC] [ALL] conf_load: Processing thread 0 - config file /etc/motion/motion.conf
[444040:motion] [NTC] [ALL] motion_startup: Motion 4.1.1 Started
[444040:motion] [NTC] [ALL] motion_startup: Logging to file (/var/log/motion/motion.log)

Checking Live Feed

Now, you will be able to find the live by typing the following in your browser and enter. localhost:8081

If you want to see the live feed from outside, you need to configure port forwarding in your home router public_IP_address:forwarded_port_address

That’s all for today. Cheers!

You can also read my other posts related to Raspberry Pi:

References

  1. How to Make Raspberry Pi Webcam Server and Stream Live Video || Motion + Webcam + Raspberry Pi

Leave a comment

You may also enjoy