Pascal Mermoz

PiCammory

PiCammory

The Garden's Camera based on Raspberry Pi (with motion detection)



This project build a high definition camera from a dummy outdoor camera.
The camera objective are to:

  1. Take hourly full definition picture of the garden
  2. Detect garden's intrusion from a noisy environment (tree, leaf, wind, sun, ...)
  3. Record garden local temperature and humidity to feed the sprinkler controller (TBD)

Picammera includes the following

  • Capture of one full size image every hour
  • Python3 with C functions for fast image processing
    • Image capture: 100ms
    • Image processing: 26ms
  • Advanced motion detection algorithms from 5 stages:
    1. Moving Average of previous image (with low memory usage)
    2. Difference between moving average and current image
    3. Moving Average Mask to automatically remove noisy pixel
    4. Surface detection to convert adjacent pixels to surface (with very efficient algorithm)
    5. Surface processing to detect motion
  • Continus HD video recording in memory
  • Save about 10s of video before the trigger event
  • send mail upon motion detection
  • upload movies on a FTP server
  • automatically convert h264 movies to mp4
  • Bonjour to advertise services
  • ASP for easy file sharing with Mac
  • WiringPi for GPIO access without root privilege
  • Automatic start at boot, and restart after a crash (restartd)

Hardware Description

Camera Body

The SecurityMan SM-3802 include an aluminum body with plenty of space inside.
Camera Back

The presence of multiple grove provide a way to secure the internal circuit board.
Camera Back

The only complain is about the arm, very difficult to have a precise horizontal rotation of the camera, very difficult to hold tight.

The Raspberry Pi and all component are placed on the Styrene Sheets, this way it is easy to insert and remove the Pi from the body. 0.08 thick styrene fit perfectly in the lower grove.
Camera Back

Power Supply & Network connector

The Raspberry Pi is powered throughout the ethernet cable. When an ethernet cable is used for 10 and 100Mb only 4 cable over the 8 available are used for data. The passive PoE Injector used the remaining 4 unused cables to provide the 12DC powers. In the camera, a DC converter is used to convert the 12V to the Raspberry friendly 5V.

Camera Back

On the Raspberry board, I want to let the maximum of space next to the USB connector for future extention. All the network/power connector are push on one side of the board, within a very limited space.

Camera Back

A Keystone Jack is fixed on the board, the 4 data cable (green and orange) are connected to a Cat5e male crimp connector.
The Cat5e male connector was cut in half to fit in the small available space .
Camera Back

From the Keystone Jack, the 4 power cable (blue and brown) are connected to the input of the DC converter. The cable goes under the board where the UBEC DC converter is fixed
Camera Back

The 5V power cable is them connected to a micro USB connector with some Heat Shrink tubing around. Camera BackCamera BackCamera Back

And finally the power cable is connected to the Raspberry Pi.
The custom power cable permit the connection in the small space between the front face and the Raspberry Pi.

Camera Back

A square hole is perform in the back of the camera cover for the Keystone Jack.

Camera Back

Camera Sensor

A custom front plate is cut from the Styrene Sheets to maintain the sensor in place, and hide the Camera inside from curious ;-)

Camera BackCamera Back

Note: In this configuration, the sensor is rotated by 180°.

RGB LED

A GPIO pin is limited to 16mA, for a total for all pins to 50mA. The design is for 3mA per pin (17 pins * 3mA = 51mA). We do not need the usual 20mA per LED, 6mA is probably enough for what is mainly a debug indicator. From the measure of the forward voltage for each color, we get the value for each resistor

Color FV ohm
Red 1.7V 270
Green 2.4V 150
Blue 2.5V 150

The position of the LED was selected to reduce the impact on the GPIO port and keep the cable on the same side of the board to not interfere with the camera sensor cable.

Camera Back

Camera Back

Temperature And Humidity Sensor

TBD

Camera BackCamera Back

Parts and Cost

Description Reference Price Store
CPU Raspberry Pi Model B $35.00 Newark
Sensor Raspberry PI 5MP Camera Board Module $25.00 Newark
Camera Body SecurityMan SM-3802 Dummy Outdoor/Indoor Camera $16.61 Amazon
Power Supply DC 12V 2A $13.00
SD Card Transcend 16 GB $12.76
Power part Huacam HCP05 Passive PoE Injector/Splitter DC Connector $6.89 Amazon
DC/DC Converter UBEC Input: 5-23v Output:5V 3a $4.76 Amazon
Board Styrene Sheets - White - 12x12 0.08 Thick ($10.99/10) $1.10 Amazon
Punch Down Keystone Jack Cat-5e RJ-45 ($5.19/5) $1.04 Amazon
Cable 20cm Female to Female 2.54mm 0.1 Inch Jumper Cable Wires Connector ($3.99/5) $0.80 Amazon
USB connector Micro USB Type A Male 5 Pin Connectors Jack ($3.90/10) $0.39 Amazon
Cat6, Cat5e crimp connectors pack of 100 ($9.76/100) $0.10 Amazon
3 Resistors: 270 ohm, 2x 150 ohm $0.10
Heat Shrink tubing $0.10
RGB Led ($2.67/50) $0.05 Amazon
Total $117

For future use:

Description Reference Price Store
DHT22 Digital Temperature And Humidity Sensor $6.49 Amazon

Software Installation and Setup

Setting Up the Raspberry Pi

Copying an image to the SD card in Mac OS X (mostly graphical interface) http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup

Download the image from a mirror or torrent http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

Raw Images Raspbian, Release Date 2014-01-07

Extract the image by double clicking on the download file

Connect the SD card reader with the SD card inside;

From the Apple () menu, choose About This Mac, then click on More info...; if you are using Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion then click on System report.

Click on USB (or Card Reader if using an in-built SD card reader) then search for your SD card in the upper right section of the window; click it, then search for BSD name in the lower right section: must be something like diskn where n is a number (for example, disk4). Note this number

Unmount the partition so that you will be allowed to overwrite the disk by opening Disk Utility and unmounting it (do not eject it, or you have to reconnect it). Note: On Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion, "Verify Disk" (before unmounting) will display the BSD name as "/dev/disk1s1" (or similar), allowing you to skip the previous two steps.

From the Terminal run:

sudo dd if=path_of_your_image.img of=/dev/diskn bs=1m

Remember to replace n with the number that you noted before!

<!> Warning: giving a wrong number for '/dev/diskn' can damage your computer,
    be extremely careful with 'dd' command.

Wait a LONG time!

Insert it in the Raspberry Pi, and have fun

Raspbian Initial Settings

$ ssh pi@<ip address>
  password: raspberry
$ sudo raspi-config

Modify the following item:

  • 1 Expand Filesystem

  • 2 Change User Password

  • 4 Internationalisation Options

    • I1 Change Locale

      • Remove en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
      • Add en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
      • Default: en_US.UTF-8

    • I2 Change Timezone

      • US
      • Pacific Ocean

  • 5 Enable Camera

  • Advanced Options

    • A2 Hostname

      • PiCammory

Note: only 1 and 5 are required.

Reboot to apply changes

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Optionally, after rebooting, check the time and timezone

$ date

Update Raspbian

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Install Netatalk & Bonjour

Netatalk is a freely-available Open Source AFP fileserver.

$ sudo apt-get install netatalk

Register ASP (File sharing with Mac)

$ sudo nano /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
    <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
    <service>
        <type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
        <port>548</port>
    </service>
</service-group>

Register SSH (Remote Shell)

$ sudo nano /etc/avahi/services/ssh.service

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
    <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
    <service>
        <type>_ssh._tcp</type>
        <port>22</port>
    </service>
</service-group>

$ sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

Test of Bonjour: Browse for mDNS/DNS-SD services using the Avahi daemon

$ sudo apt-get install avahi-utils

$ avahi-browse -a

Install library needed for Python

$ sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd1

Install Python3 Goodies

$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev
$ sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools
$ sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Install WiringPi

GPIO Interface library for the Raspberry Pi

$ git clone git://git.drogon.net/wiringPi
$ cd wiringPi
$ ./build
$ gpio -v
$ gpio readall

Optional:

$ /usr/local/bin/gpio export 5 out
$ /usr/local/bin/gpio export 23 out
$ /usr/local/bin/gpio export 24 out
$ /usr/local/bin/gpio export 25 out
$ ls -l /sys/devices/virtual/gpio
total 0
drwxrwx--- 3 root gpio 0 Apr 27 08:41 gpio18
drwxrwx--- 3 root gpio 0 Apr 27 08:41 gpio23
drwxrwx--- 3 root gpio 0 Apr 27 08:41 gpio24
drwxrwx--- 3 root gpio 0 Apr 27 08:41 gpio5
drwxrwx--- 3 root gpio 0 Dec 31  1969 gpiochip0

Install WiringPi2-Python

Python-wrapped version of Gordon Henderson's WiringPi version 2.

$ git clone https://github.com/Gadgetoid/WiringPi2-Python.git
$ cd WiringPi2-Python
$ sudo python3 setup.py install

Install PiCamera

$ sudo apt-get install python3-picamera

If you get an error during Picammory execution, like:

    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/picamera/camera.py", line 1470, in _get_frame
    return self._encoders.values()[0].frame
TypeError: 'dict_values' object does not support indexing

you need to change the line 1470 in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/picamera/camera.py from

return self._encoders.values()[0].frame

to

return (self._encoders.values())[0].frame

this is fixed in development version but not yet released.

Install Python3 PIL

Python Imaging Library

$ sudo pip-3.2 install Pillow

Install GPAC

Multimedia Framework for MPEG-4, VRML, X3D, SVG, LASeR ... http://gpac.wp.mines-telecom.fr

$ sudo apt-get install gpac

Install Picammory

Download Picammory sources

for the last released version:

$ git clone https://github.com/pmermoz/picammory.git ~/

or, for the current development version:

$ git clone https://github.com/pmermoz/picammory.git -b develop ~/

Build the C source code

Note: This step is optional, Picammory will rebuild the C code at startup.

$ cd ~/picammory; python3 setup.py build_ext --inplace; cd ..

Create the log files folder

$ sudo mkdir /var/log/picammory
$ sudo chown pi /var/log/picammory

Edit the configuration file

$ nano ~/picammory/picammory.ini

  • [camera]

    • name

      Name for your camera, this name is used to prefix filenames generated by the camera.

  • [smtp]

    Picammory send mail to inform of system status and detection events.

    • username

      User name for your email account

    • password

      Password for your email account

    • usetls

      YES to use encrypted communication with the email server

    • server

      Mail server Address and port (like 'smtp.mailserver.com:587')

  • [email]

    • recipient

      Email address (or list of) for the recipient of alert

    • sender

      Email address to identify this program (like 'GardenCam mycamera@mydomain.com')

  • [ftp]

    Picammory upload videos and pictures to an FTP server

    • username

      FTP user name

    • password

      FTP password

    • server

      FTP server Address

  • [gpio]

    • ledRedPin

      GPIO Pin number for the Red LED (23)

    • ledGreenPin

      GPIO Pin number for the Green LED (24)

    • ledBluePin

      GPIO Pin number for the Blue LED (25)

    • ledCameraPin

      GPIO Pin number for the Pi Camera LED (5)

Install the Automatic start at boot

Copy the boot script for automatic start at boot time:

$ sudo cp ~/picammory/etc/init.d/picammory /etc/init.d/

Make The Startup Script Executable

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/picammory

Make The Script Run At Startup

$ sudo update-rc.d picammory defaults

Install the Automatic restart

Restartd is a daemon for checking running and not running processes. It execute a script or a program if the process is not running.

Restart can take up to 20s.

$ sudo apt-get install restartd
$ sudo nano /etc/restartd.conf

picammory ".*picammorydaemon.py*" "service picammory restart"

Finally, Reboot

Reboot the system

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Motion detection Algorithm

(TBD)

Download from GitHub GitHub-Mark-64px.png 

PiCammory is on

LMR3FlashLogo.png

And if you like Picammory, please, take a look at Vismory and mTip

Enjoy,
Pascal

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