Chapter 4 - Remote Viewing of Motion Images

on Your Phone or PC

4.1 The images from your camera are stored in the directory /var/lib/motion . We will upload these images to Google Drive. We can use our phone or pc to view the images from Raspberry Pi. There will be a delay of 10 to 20 minutes between the image being taken, and the image upload to Google Drive. If that is OK and you want to have some fun, this tutorial will work for you. If you just want a dedicated motion activated camera, that you can access through your phone, you can get one online for $60. Just search for Smart 1080 Wifi Video Usb Camera Charger Wall Socket Plug Charger Camera Surveillance Camera on Amazon.

Please note that VNC, and live viewing of the images in a web browser though Motion are not secure. If you open ports to these applications on you router/modem, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) will know it. You will get dozens of hack attempts. Use of SSH to remotely control your Raspberry Pi is relatively safe, if you use good password or passphrase.

4.2 This setup requires Raspberry Pi and camera; with monitor, keyboard and mouse. You will want to install SSH also and DDNS as per Chapter 1. Install Motion program as per Chapter 3. SSH allows you to place Raspberry Pi in your home without monitor, keyboard, or mouse. You just need a power source.

4.3 If you have not already done so, you must change the Pi password from the default. By default the username is pi and the password is

raspberry

. Use a strong password or passphrase. Type in passwd into the command line. You will be prompted for the current password (raspberry). Enter it. You will then be prompted twice for a new password. It will end with the message (passwd: password updated successfully).

4.4 We will need a Google Drive account, and we will be installing rclone. Rclone synchronizes files between the Raspberry Pi and Google Drive. Once the images are on Google Drive, we can view them with your Google Drive phone app. We will be adding two shell scripts in cron. One to keep the /var/lib/motion directory from getting too large. The other contains the rclone sync commands.

4.5 We will create a free 15 GB Google Drive account. First create a Google account.

To create a Google account:

• Go to www.google.com.
• Click create an account.
• The sign-up form will appear.
• Next enter your phone number.
• Enter the verification code sent to your phone and click Verify.
• The personal information page will appear.
• Review Google's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, then click I agree.

Second, go to https://drive.google.com

4.6 Second we will install rclone, and configure it. I suggest following the detailed instructions at the webpage https://www.howtogeek.com/451262/how-to-use-rclone-to-back-up-to-google-drive-on-linux/" . Follow the instructions under the heading Installing Rclone. I suggest reading the rest of the article after the installation. However, we will be tailoring the Back Up Script to our needs.

4.7 Create a rclone script in your default home directory.

cd ~

nano gbk.sh

(Copy and paste the following text.)

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/rclone copy --update --verbose --transfers 5 --checkers 8 --contimeout 60s --timeout 300s --retries 3 --low-level-retries 10 --stats 1s "/var/lib/motion" "google-drive:PiDocs"

(To save modifications and exit. Press Ctrl + x. Press y. Press Enter.)

4.7.1 The entries are defined as follows.

• copy: Copy the files from the local computer to the remote storage, skipping over files that are already present on the remote storage.
• –update: Skip any files that are on the remote storage that have a modified time that is newer than the file on the local computer.
• –verbose: Gives information about every file that is transferred.
• –transfers 5: This sets the number of files to copy in parallel.
• –checkers 8: How many “checkers” to run in parallel. Checkers monitor the transfers that are in progress.
• –contimeout 60s: The connection timeout. It sets the time that rclone will try to make a connection to the remote storage.
• –timeout 300s: If a transfer becomes idle for this amount of time, it is considered broken and is disconnected.
• –retries 3: If there are this many errors, the entire copy action will be restarted.
• –low-level-retries 10: A low-level retry tries to repeat one failing operation, such as a single HTTP request. This value sets the limit for the number of retries.
• –stats 1s: rclone can provide statistics on the transferred files. This sets the frequency of update of the statistics to one second.
• “/var/lib/motion”: The local directory to we’re going to copy to the remote storage.
• “google-drive:PiDocs”: The destination directory in the remote storage. Note the use of “google-drive”, which is the name we gave to this remote connection during the the rclone config sequence. Also note the colon “:” that is used as a separator between the remote storage name and the directory name. Subdirectories are separated by the usual “/” forward slash. If the destination directory does not exist, it will be created.

4.7.2 Make the script executable with this command:

chmod +x gbk.sh

4.7.3 Eventually this script will be activate with a cron entry.

4.8 Next, create a shell script to limit the number of image files in the /var/lib/motion directory. Create the script in you default home directory. This is important because too many files in this directory will sync too many files with Google Drive.

cd ~
nano rmlogfiles2.sh

(Copy and paste the following. No shebang necessary.)

cd /var/lib/motion
d=/var/lib/motion
fc=$(ls $d | wc -l)
if [ $fc -gt 20 ]
then
fd=$(( $fc - 20))
counter=1
while [ $counter -le $fd ]
do
sudo rm "$(ls -t | tail -1)"
((counter++))
done
fi
cd ~

(To save modifications and exit. Press Ctrl + x. Press y. Press Enter.)

4.8.1 The code above is described as follows.

• Change directories to /var/lib/motion
• Set d equal to /var/lib/motion
• fc is the number of files in /var/lib/motion
• The if condition checks if we have more than 20 files in the /var/lib/motion
• If true we continue. If false we go to end of script.
• If true, subtract the number of files from 20 to get the number of files to delete.
• The while do loop deletes the extra files. One at a time; listing the directory files in chronological order and deleting the last file. This is repeated for all files in the loop.
• This leaves us with the 20 most recent files.
• Finally, we change back to the home directory.

4.8.2 Make the script executable with this command:

chmod 700 rmlogfiles2.sh

4.8.3 See about how many files are in /var/lib/motion

ls /var/lib/motion

4.8.4 Run the script rmlogfiles2.sh

bash rmlogfiles2.sh

4.8.5 There should only be 20 jpg or avi files left. Check with:

ls /var/lib/motion

4.9 Now we can test the rclone script. You should see the 20 files getting uploaded to Google Drive. The folder PiDocs will be created automatically, if it does not exist.

./gbk.sh

4.10 Check Google Drive in your browser for the new folder PiDocs. In the folder will be the 20 image files.

4.11 We will now make cron entries for both scripts (gbk.sh and rmlogfiles2.sh). We can run the scripts automatically every so many minutes.

4.11.1 Open crontab selecting the nano editor.

crontab -e

4.11.2 Copy and paste the following lines beneath the bottom of the comments.

*/20 * * * * ~/gbk.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
*/15 * * * * ~/rmlogfiles2.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

(To save modifications and exit. Press Ctrl + x. Press y. Press Enter.)
(>/dev/null 2>&1 limits the logging that is done.)

4.11.3 Cron will start itself. If in doubt there is always:

sudo service cron start

4.12. Your setup is complete. Every time you turn on the Raspberry Pi, the Motion app will run in the background, and the cron scripts run at their appointed time. Remember that the Google Drive will fill up with images. There is no script to limit the number of images in PiDocs. I suggest deleting the directory PiDocs from Google Drive daily. It will be recreated and written over every 20 minutes. You have access to Raspberry Pi through the command line SSH. You have access to your camera images through the Google Drive, on your phone or another computer.

4.12.1 It is good practice to check your directories in Raspberry Pi to see how full they are. Your system will shut down if log files take up all the allowed space. Here are two commands to check the space.

(File system disk space usage)

df

(Disk usage for directories. The largest directories show at the bottom of screen, just above cursor. Do not use -h for human readable. It will not sort correctly. In the following example, we start with /, and proceed to /var, and then to /var/lib.)

du –max-depth=1 / | sort -n

du –max-depth=1 /var | sort -n

du –max-depth=1 /var/lib | sort -n

Your setup is complete. The camera will take motion activated pictures, save them to your Pi, and upload them to the Google Drive, where you can view the pictures.

theSurfDragon.com

Rasp-Pi Navigation

Table of Contents
Ch1-SSH
Ch2-VNC
Ch3-Motion Camera
Ch4-Remote Viewing