Pi Control Hub: Spoke 1 :Security Camera (continued)- Photo gallery of the intruders

29 Jul 2016

This is continuation of previous blog post , where we installed motion to stream video from the Pi Camera, which acts as live preview of the security camera.For more details check out -

Pi Control Hub: Spoke 1 :Security Camera - setting up Motion to stream video

As part of this blog post we will setup a simple web server on the Pi using lighttpd and Single File PHP Gallery 4.6.1 by Kenny Svalgaard to display images that motion stores when an intruder/movement is detected.(I have used the single file PHP gallery a couple of years back, when using the original Pi model B and the Pi Camera on a simple bird watching project for the summer and which means I can vouch for it ). As part of the gallery as shown in the picture below, you can preview all the picture taken when movement is detected and also click on the pictures enlarge and even download the full size image to your laptop, if you have to ..

In addition, I am going to move the Pi NoIR cam + SD card + WiFi USB adapter to the Pi Zero as showing in the picture below, because I plan on using the Pi B+ on another spoke.

Here are the steps/list of commands to follow to setup lighttpd followed by single file PHP gallery

#1 SSH into your Pi and Install lighttpd

sudo apt-get install lighttpd

#2 Install the PHP packages

sudo apt-get install php5-common php5-cgi php5

at this point also enable Fastcgi module using the command

sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php

#3 Update the permissions of the www directory which was created by the install of lighttpd

Change the directory owner and group to

sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www

Give the necessay permisions to the folder

sudo chmod 775 /var/www

Then add pi to the www-data group

sudo usermod -a -G www-data pi

#4 Stop and Start the the lighttpd service and test

sudo service lighttpd stop

sudo service lighttpd start

or you can also use - sudo service lighttpd restart , if everything is setup correctly, when you open your browser to test - http://ipaddressOfPi

In case you come across an error/or the page does not load, check your error logs to debug

sudo tail /var/log/lighttpd/error.log

#5 Optionally, if you would like to run a test with a small html page of your own, use the following commands

cd /var/www/html/

rename the exist file that serves the page in the screenshot above

sudo mv index.lighttpd.html index.lighttpd.htmlxx

create an index.html file

sudo nano index.html

Copy paste the following code

<html>
<head>
<title>Lighttpd test</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Testing Lighttpd and PHP setup</h1>
<p>Yes !!! it is working.</p>
<p><?php phpinfo();?></p>
</body>
</html>

ctrl+X to save the file in the nano editor

Stop and start the lighttpd service

sudo service lighttpd stop

sudo service lighttpd start

#6 install php5-gd image processing libary to show the thumbnails on the web page, this is required Single File PHP Gallery

sudo apt-get install php5-gd

#7 downlad the Single File PHP Gallery

get the zip files from http://sye.dk/sfpg/

sudo wget http://sye.dk/sfpg/Single_File_PHP_Gallery_4.6.1.zip

Unzipping and move the files to

sudo unzip Single_File_PHP_Gallery_4.6.1.zip -d /var/www/html

also dont forget to rename the index.html file created in step 5

sudo mv index.html index.htmlxx

#8 Upload acouple of picture to the html folder or take a couple of pictures using the pi camera

use a FTP tool like filezilla to upload a couple of images to the /var/www/html

Or if you dont have an FTP tool navigate to the /var/www/html folder and take a couple of pictures using

sudo raspistill -o test1.jpg

once done open a URL in the browser http://ipaddressOfPi , where you should see the images you have just taken.

#9 Setting up the motion.conf file to point to the newly create pics folder

Now create a new folder called pics

sudo mkdir pics

Stop the motion service, if you have not done it as part of the previous steps

sudo service motion stop

Assign ownership to the target directory for motion

sudo chown motion /var/www/html/pics

Now modify the following parameter in the motion.conf file

sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf

- the target direcotry the new one we created

target_dir /var/www/html/pics

- Set a new threshold value to determine when motion is detect, i bumped mine to 3500.You will have to experiment with this value ..Basically Threshold for number of changed pixels in an image that triggers motion detection (default: 1500).

threshold 3500

- And I also choose to have turn off video by setting the ffmpeg_output_movies to off

ffmpeg_output_movie off

#10 Start motion service and test

sudo service motion start

now when you click on the pics section in the browser http://ipaddressOfPi , you should see all the images captured by motion , when an intruder is detected

<in my case i am using random things around me on my table >, you can also click on the picture enlarge it as shown in the picture below and click the link to download the full size image to your laptop.