Motion Detection with RaspiCam, Non-Module version

bhepler

First, I want thank @alexyak for his motioncontrol module. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t work on my Mirror due to new security controls put in place by the Node.js team. Apparently it’s not a wise move to let client-side Javascript access the webcam attached to your server. Who knew?

In the end, I ended up seeking another solution. The Facial Recognition module didn’t work due to the reduction in light coming through the mirror itself. But I do get an image. I started browsing sites of people who have turned their Raspi into a security system. It turns out, someone ported the Motion framework to Raspberry Pi and called it MMAL-Motion.

After a lot of reading, I found a Wiki for MMAL Motion. Following the steps for Jessie, I did the following:

Change to your home directory. cd ~
Install the library dependencies (just copy & paste into the terminal. I wouldn’t want to do this by hand)
sudo apt-get install -y libjpeg-dev libavformat56 libavformat-dev libavcodec56 libavcodec-dev libavutil54 libavutil-dev libc6-dev zlib1g-dev libmysqlclient18 libmysqlclient-dev libpq5 libpq-dev
Download the precompiled binary archive file:
wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ruqgv1h65zufr6/motion-mmal-lowflyerUK-20151114.tar.gz
Uncompress the archive file
tar -zxvf motion-mmal-lowflyerUK-20151114.tar.gz

This will put a configuration file called motion-mmalcam-both.conf and a folder called motion in your home folder. At this step you can test it if you like, but for my purposes I needed to make a few changes tot the config file. So, make a copy and edit the copy.
cp motion-mmalcam-both.conf motion.conf
nano motion.conf
I played around with the configuration quite a bit until I found one I liked. But for our purposes (turning the display on when someone comes near) you only have to make a few changes.
framerate 4 - run the detection video at 4 frames per second
threshold 2500 - increase the # of pixels to trigger the screen. We want them to get close to the mirror
minimum_motion_frames 2 - Motion must be detected in 2 consecutive frames (at 4 FPS)
event_gap 60 - This is important. This is how long in seconds after no motion the screen will turn off.
output_pictures off - Do not save images
ffmpeg_output_movies off - Do not record video
stream_port 0 - Turn off remote viewing
webcontrol_port 0 - Turn off HTTP control of camera
on_event_start vcgencmd display_power 1 - Important! This is the command to turn on the screen
on_event_end vcgencmd display_power 0 - Important! This is the command to turn off the screen

Save your motion.conf file and now you can test it out by entering ./motion -c motion.conf. If you stay very still for a minute, the screen should turn off. Move close to the mirror, and everything should come back after a couple seconds.

bibi

hi @bhepler ! thx for sharing your findings!i will try this settings later this week. before to get into it, could you please let me know if it will also work without a RaspiCam?? usb camera is ok? where did you put/hide your own cam? thx :)

bhepler

@bibi I haven’t tried it with a USB cam, but it should work. In the config file, there is a switch to throw if you’re using a USB cam (and different switches to throw if you’re using a network cam - which raises interesting possibilities).

My camera is mounted above the monitor & behind the one-way acrylic. My monitor is smaller than my acrylic by about 2" on a side. This is good in that it’s a very clean installation and you don’t see a camera when you look at the mirror. It’s bad in that it cuts down on the light reaching the camera, preventing the facial recognition from working.

bhepler

Hrm. New problem: After a few hours, the screen goes white. This obviously will not do. Back to the drawing board.

I found this in the motion log:

[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:02] motion_loop: End of event 74
[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:04] motion_loop: fps: 3.999920 idle 26.67% over 0.00%
[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:09] motion_loop: fps: 3.998465 idle 24.89% over 0.00%
[1] [ERR] [ENC] [Nov 15 20:25:10] ffmpeg_put_frame: Error while writing video frame:
[1] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:10] motion_loop: Thread exiting
[1] [INF] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:10] motion_cleanup: Calling vid_close() from motion_cleanup
[1] [INF] [VID] [Nov 15 20:25:10] vid_close: calling video source cleanup
[1] [ALR] [VID] [Nov 15 20:25:10] MMAL Camera cleanup
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:11] main: Threads finished
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:12] main: Motion terminating
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:12] motion_remove_pid: Removed process id file (pid file).
[0] [NTC] [ALL] [Nov 15 20:25:12] motion_remove_pid: Closing logfile (/tmp/motion.log).

bhepler

I believe I have it cracked. The white screen was due to MMAL Motion crashing whilst writing a frame to disk. When Motion crashes, it apparently jacks up the video output.

My current solution is to use PM2 to monitor the motion process and restart it when necessary. I’m testing now. If it works for a few more days I’ll report back.

Adding motion to PM2: pm2 start motion. Be sure that the motion is not configured to run as a daemon (first option in config file).

lolobyte

@bhepler

Hi, i do the same at first and restor my sw installation.
But after the same procedure of sw installation this error was again on top.

I resolve, by my sw, the reason for that was: motion must start after pm2 startin mm.

My mm start’s automaticly after rebooting.
My motion also. => collision of SW.

By doing motion in an cron job with delay time al was fun an running as iwant.

in my case i do following:
don’t foget to install screen.

sudo apt-get intsall screen

My motion is running in a screen session.
then the cronjob

crontab -e

and set motion with following parameters:

@reboot sleep 150; screen -S motion -dmS sudo motion -c /home/pi/motion/motion-mmalcam.conf

i hope this is helpfull for you and other persons here.

bhepler

Update: Having PM2 monitor the motion process seems to work quite well. However, I have now discovered that there is a memory leak somewhere in all of this. Using the MMM-SystemStats module, I can watch free memory trickle down throughout the day.

I’ve configured the Pi to reboot early each morning. That’s not an ideal situation, but it seems to have solved the problem. Good enough for me! And more importantly, good enough for the gift recipient.

lolobyte

@bhepler

have u increase the swapfile?

bhepler

@lolobyte Negative, I have not. What would you recommend?

lolobyte

@bhepler
in general it’s not bad for a raspi3 to increase the swapfile from 100MB to a higher level.

at first check your status:
sudo service dphys-swapfile status
U see something like this:

● dphys-swapfile.service - LSB: Autogenerate and use a swap file
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile)
Active: active (exited) since Mi 2016-11-30 13:17:14 CET; 6h ago
Process: 613 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/dphys-swapfile start (code=exited, status=0 /SUCCESS)

Nov 30 13:17:13 raspi3 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Autogenerate and use a swa…
Nov 30 13:17:14 raspi3 dphys-swapfile[613]: Starting dphys-swapfile swapfile…
Nov 30 13:17:14 raspi3 dphys-swapfile[613]: want /var/swap=1024MByte, checki…t
Nov 30 13:17:14 raspi3 dphys-swapfile[613]: done.
Nov 30 13:17:14 raspi3 systemd[1]: Started LSB: Autogenerate and use a swap…e.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

Maybe u have 100MB instead of 1024 like in my case.

If u want to change this value the edit your

sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile

change to this value and save your file

CONF_SWAPSIZE=1024

the do a

sudo dphys-swapfile setup

and activate your new swap level:

sudo dphys-swapfile swapon

thats all. Now your System can handle wit more than his physical RAM.

In My case i do in raspi-config a new

“Expand File system”

to reorganize the file system an reboot after that my raspi.
If you are a owner of a raspi 2 it’s more common to change the swap file to max 512MB.

please inform me what’s your experience after this change

you can also check very niche your tasks mem, swap and other things in a ssh session on your PC with htop

sudo apt-get install htop

have a nice try

Binog

@lolobyte
Can U specify what this command does,. Am not sure if it isn’t doubling the motion command:

@reboot sleep 150; screen -S motion -dmS sudo motion
(ignored the -c path part, cause renamed the config to motion.conf, so not needed)

why is there two time motion - in it?

By the way it isn’t working on my mirror

Kimzer

I am completely unable to make this work.
The camera wont take any snapshots, maybe just a config error. But can someone confirm that this still works or show me something that works? Dont wanna go out and buy a pir sensor if i can make use of the raspicam. :)

bhepler

@Kimzer - If the camera won’t even take a snapshot, then none of this is going to work. Have you tried the various tutorials about getting the PiCam to work? The ones that are at the basic level of “I enter this command and it takes a picture right then and there and I can download it”?

Start with the official Getting Started Guide. Once you can get images from the camera to your Pi, come back.

If you can get the camera to produce images but have trouble getting Motion to work, follow my tutorial and the part where it says “at this point you can test it but…”, stop there. Change the parameter in the motion.conf file named output_pictures to on and change on_event_start to echo Motion Detected!. That should put a bunch of snapshots on your memory card. Test Motion by entering ./motion -c motion.conf and you should see motion writing messages to the screen.

Kimzer

Ah my bad, poorly formulated on my end here.

I am able to take snapshots, and i have gotten the camera to work just fine itself. It is the motion part i am struggling with.

But i will have to test some more.

Freebond

This post is deleted!

Natacha3

@bhepler It works perfectly !
Thank you so much for sharing !

stangarrang

@bhepler I was hoping you could give me a hand. I’ve got your motion working but. Pm2 is not auto starting the motion. Everything is working fine if I manually “pm2 start motion” and " pm2 start mm" and I’ve tried adding @pm2 start motion to my auto start along side my “pm2 start mm” but that only breaks both processes. I’m trying to get both the magic mirror and the motion to auto start upon reboot.

bhepler

@stangarrang Sure, no problem. Quick question: Did you enter pm2 save after you started both the motion and the Magic Mirror processes?

stangarrang

@bhepler yes that was one of the first things I did but after reboot nothing was saving. Actually just as you replied I went through a couple steps for pm2 startup plus the command that came after. After that I did a pm2 save and now things are working well :) thanks for your prompt reply!

AnduriI

is it possible to use Motion to activate the screen and MMM-Facial-Recignition simultaneously? Maybe also use the on_event_start to activate some lights in the front of the MM to increase image quality…