Motion Detector

[j.e.f.f]

@Natacha3 it took me a while to get my motion detector to work too. I suggest making a simple script independent of MagicMirror to test that your PIR sensor is working and tuned correctly. Mine has two adjustment screws on it that I needed to play with before it behaved properly.

More information here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/physical-computing-with-python/pir/

[Natacha3]

@j.e.f.f Thank you again Jeff but … I use a Pi camera, not a PIR sensor ! ;-)

I’ve checked that the camera was operating normally (sorry again, I’m not able to recover the link but … at least i’ve seen the picture !

[Natacha3]

@mongo116 Thank you for your advice but I’m a complete ignorant and I must admit that I’ve been affraid by reading https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion/blob/master/motion_guide.html

As a total noob, I guess it’s a bit out of reach for me. (maybe after 3 or 4 decades I will play the easy side with that ! ) ;-)

[Hawking]

@Natacha3
I also tested the motiondetector of alexyak, without success and therefore installed Motion, which works without problems. However, I understand, that the process to compile it for your self is not easy for a beginner.
Are you aware of https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/988/motion-detection-with-raspicam-non-module-version
The linked thread provides a precompiled version of Motion and some recommended settings.

[Natacha3]

@Hawking Thank you so much for your input !
It works as a charm !

[trividar]

Hello all,
I updated my raspberry to stretch and now my MM disable the Monitor and the Monitor start immediate without motion. I got this massage:

Does someone know why this happen?
Thanks a lot!

[trividar]

No one an Idea?

[Natacha3]

Hi all,

I just come back on this topic because I followed the install process as described by hawking:

@hawking said in Motion Detector:

@Natacha3
Are you aware of https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/988/motion-detection-with-raspicam-non-module-version
The linked thread provides a precompiled version of Motion and some recommended settings.

So I just open a command window and do the following command ./motion -c motion.conf
then I open another window and I start the MagicMirror with npm start

Everything works fine for a couple of hours then the Mirror stays dark

I do a CTRL Q
and in the motion window I get the following :

[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.998576 idle 63.46% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_newfile: File of type 2 saved to: /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.998768 idle 61.99% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.999344 idle 62.23% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_newfile: File of type 2 saved to: /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.998928 idle 62.18% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.998960 idle 62.16% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_newfile: File of type 2 saved to: /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.999136 idle 62.54% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.995844 idle 61.22% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_newfile: File of type 2 saved to: /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.997186 idle 61.51% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 4.001200 idle 62.69% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_newfile: File of type 2 saved to: /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.999360 idle 60.96% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.998641 idle 59.35% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [EVT] event_newfile: File of type 2 saved to: /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.999232 idle 59.59% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] motion_loop: fps: 3.999088 idle 58.86% over 0.00%
[0] [ERR] [ALL] main: Thread 1 - Watchdog timeout, trying to do a graceful restart
[0] [ERR] [ALL] main: Thread 1 - Watchdog timeout, did NOT restart graceful,killing it!
[0] [INF] [ALL] motion_cleanup: Calling vid_close() from motion_cleanup
[0] [INF] [VID] vid_close: calling video source cleanup
[0] [ALR] [VID] MMAL Camera cleanup

So I can see that some detection occured properly and pictures have been saved in /run/shm/lastsnap.jpg
(I checked, this function is deactivated but … anyway ! Only 1 pic is stored so it’s not a matter of folder flooded)

The Watchdog timeout would be a possible lead but google does not help me so much as so many different issues are linked… :cry:

I hope that you will forgive me if I asked a stupid question and what you will be rather indulgent not to turn me down !

[bhepler]

@natacha3 - It’s been a really long time since I wrote that Motion post. But I’ll try to help. IIRC, the lastsnap.jpg is intended to be a capture of the last image that the Motion system grabbed. It will continually overwrite that file. You may (or maybe not) have disabled the “capture screenshots to folder” functionality and left the “save last image to folder” feature running. Or not. I’d have to see your motion.conf file to be sure.

Motion never did close gracefully, to my knowledge. It seems that motion is definitely detecting motion of some form and writing to the lastsnap.jpg file. So that’s a plus. If you read the whole thread that @Hawking linked, you’ll see that I had problems with Motion crashing. When it crashes, it stops detecting properly and never runs the script to wake up the monitor.

I suspect that if you check the lastsnap.jpg timestamp, you’ll see that it was created at some point between “works fine” and “won’t turn the monitor on”. That would be the last time that motion successfully wrote to the disk before the process crashed.

Try starting Motion with pm2. I found that pm2 will detect when the Motion process crashes and restart it for you. That should keep the detection active.

[Natacha3]

@bhepler, you’re my hero !

Thank you so much for your kind advice !
Starting motion with pm2 solves the issue.
I just did not dare to start also the magic mirror with it as I’ve read somewhere that they would start simultaneously and as a consequence everything would fail… I will try but later on !

Thank you agin !
Nat