How to Make a Portable Monitoring System Using Raspberry Pi

Overview

Mabuhay!

Darwin here. In this tutorial I will teach how to make a monitoring system using Raspberry Pi 3 and it works with 2 (two) USB cameras.

Materials Needed

Hardware:

Raspberry Pi 3 | Get it here
USB Web Camera | Get it here

Software:

Raspbian OS

Instructions:

Install the Raspian OS to the Micro SD Card and update using this commands in terminal.

Sudo apt-get update
Sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The system will reboot. Then resize the disk partition using raspi-config:

The following steps are basically configuring and downloading of the libraries that will used in making a live streaming video camera. Open the terminal and type the following scripts.

Step 1.

Start by removing libraries that may conflict with the newer package. These may or may not already exist on your copy of Raspbian.

sudo apt-get remove libavcodec-extra-56 libavformat56 libavresample2 libavutil54

Step 2.

Download and install the following packages by inserting the following commands into the terminal.

wget https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneye/wiki/precompiled/ffmpeg_3.1.1-1_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i ffmpeg_3.1.1-1_armhf.deb

Step 3.

Now the next step need to install the following packages, we will need these as the motion software relies on them.

sudo apt-get install curl libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libjpeg-dev libx264-142 libavcodec56 libavformat56 libmysqlclient18 libswscale3 libpq5

Step 4.

With those packages installed the user can now grab the latest version of the motion software and install to the system. To do this run the following commands.

wget https://github.com/MotionProject/motion/releases/download/release4.0.1/pi_jessie_motion_4.0.1-1_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i pi_jessie_motion_4.0.1-1_armhf.deb

Step 5.

Then to make some edits to the configuration file need to make.

sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

Find the following lines and change them to the following. Daemon on

• stream_localhost off

Note: Change the following two lines from on to off if you’re having issues with the stream freezing whenever motion occurs.

• output_pictures off
• ffmpeg_output_movies off
• stream_maxrate 100 (This will allow for real-time streaming but requires more bandwidth & resources)
• framerate 100 (This will allow for 100 frames to be captured per second allowing for smoother video)
• width 640 (This changes the width of the image displayed)
• height 480 (This changes the height of the image displayed)

Step 6.

Next need to setup up the daemon, first we need to edit the motion file.

sudo nano /etc/default/motion

Then:

start_motion_daemon=yes

Step 7.

Once the configuration to the file done simply save and exit by pressing ctrl+x then y. Now make sure the camera already connected and run the following line:

sudo service motion start

If the situation need to stop the service, simply run the following command:

sudo service motion stop

Now you should be able to check out the Webcam Stream at the IP address of our Pi so in your browser go to the following address: Ex. 192.168.1.103:8081

If the webpage cannot loading try restarting the service.

sudo service motion restart

This instruction set for setting up the USB Cameras. Before that testing the USB cameras if the generic camera will working with this script in terminal.

$ ls /dev/vid* 
/dev/video0  /dev/video1

First make a directory in home/pi/ and name the directory” camera” then open the terminal and type the scripts below. This code purpose for setting up the Camera 1:

~/webcam/cam1.conf

Enter this script inside the .conf file then save it:

videodevice /dev/video0 
webcam_port 8081

This code purpose for setting up the Camera 2:

~/webcam/cam2.conf

Enter this script inside the .conf file then save it:

videodevice /dev/video1
webcam_port 8082

These scripts work for the motion library to work the 2 USB Camera. Open the motion library by typing this /etc/motion/motion.conf on the main configuration file, most of which remains with the default values. The main change to the two thread settings pointing at the above per-camera settings:

streamcam_localhost off
Thread /home/pi/webcam/cam.cam1.conf
Thread /home/pi/webcam/cam.cam2.conf

Then click ctr+x then press y to save the change to the motion library. Testing your Monitoring System:

Open your web browser to any devices to make sure that the Raspberry Pi is connected to the devices that you intended to stream on; on the same network for me I used the portable hot-spot of my mobile phone as a local network and access the port of the two USB Camera.

Example: 192.168.43.54:8081 for the Camera1 192.168.4354:8082 for the Camera2.

......................................................

To give support on this channel.

Donate.

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/dardelacruz/5

Bitcoin: 3HHaJVzMhAKX5NUc6cayo7xcCdKJov5MDg

Ethereum: 0x04ba643cFC5EBcC8E57B038d39Eec2E52ED85710

Like and Follow.

Twitter: twitter.com/dardelacruz

Facebook: facebook.com/darwindelacruzofficial