Version 0.1: Early versions
Todo: Update the motion_cam.c to write files to the /var/www/img folder. Currently it is just writing messages to the console. Also, remove the Bill Murray placholder image.
A motion activated camera for Raspberry Pi, based on the Motion Sensing Camera project from @misperry.
This is a quick afternoon project, a bit frankensteined together but hopefully it'll get you 90% of the way.
Repo setup:
- /web: this folder contains an index.php with a stylesheet to make your project look nice. It will be copied to your webserver (setup instructions below).
- motion_cam.c: the file that controls the camera based on the infared sensor
Instructions below based on our current setup, your mileage may vary.
Connecting the PIR Sensor
The PIR sensor is extremely simple, with just a few pins to worry about: VCC / GND / OUT.
For beginners, you can find the corresponding GPIO pins via the documentation
- VCC: Connect to either the 3.5V or a 5V GPIO pin.
- GND: Connect to a Ground pin.
- OUT: Connect to an input/output pin. In this code example, we used pin 8.
Since we'll be using a webserver to view the images, we will set that up first.
Setting up the web server
We use Apache2 on the Raspberry Pi to be able to serve up the images taken with the camera.
A great guide on setting up Apache2 is avialable on Instructables
By default, your website will be serving up from /var/www
To match this repos setup, create 2 new folders via
sudo mkdir /var/www/img
sudo mkdir /var/www/css
Now you'll need to copy the files under the web folder found in this repo:
sudo cp web/index.php /var/www/index.php
sudo cp web/css/gallery.css /var/www/css/gallery.css
Your web server should be up and running. Head over to http://localhost/index.php to verify. If you're on a network, you should be able to access this server via its local IP (for example 192.168.1.123) or for the brave, you can set a hostname.
Creating the app
The app is a C project, so you'll need to install and build the bcm2835 header library files (ex. for 1.38).
Full instructions available at airspayce.com, but if you're in a hurry follow the steps below
wget http://www.airspayce.com/mikem/bcm2835/bcm2835-1.38.tar.gz
tar zxvf bcm2835-1.xx.tar.gz
cd bcm2835-1.xx
./configure
make
sudo make check
sudo make install
Now, build the app from the file in this project motion_cam.c
gcc -o motion_cam motion_cam.c -l bcm2835
sudo ./motion_cam
That's it. Your camera should be snapping pics and saving them to your local webserver.