The Pitcam

The Camera

The camera is a Connectix QuickCam, model unknown. Every thirty seconds a picture is snapped and has its orientation corrected. Every minute a thumbnail is generated for display on the HomePage.

Maintainance

Project Files

  • /proj/pitcam (also in Subversion in the general repo)
    • asciicam/
      • footer.html – The bottom of the ASCII Cam Web page.
      • header-bottom.html – The bottom of the top of the ASCII Cam Web page.
      • header-top.html – The very top of the page.
    • bin/
      • postimage – executed after an image is taken; creates a thumbnail, and updates an RSS feed with the last time motion was detected.
      • motion – A locally compiled version of motion because, as of this writing, the version in Debian unstable doesn't have on-the-fly image rotation support.
    • conf/
      • motion.conf – The configuration file for motion.
    • htdocs/
      • archive/ – archived images.
      • currentpic/
        • lastsnap.jpg – The last snapshot taken every 30 seconds.
        • thumbnail.jpg – The thumbnail image.
      • ascii.html – The ASCII Cam Web page.
      • index.html – The PitCam Web page.
      • robots.txt – Make sure Web crawlers don't find us.
  • /priv/pitcam/
    • archive/ – The old archived files, by year, month, day.

OS Stuff

To make this work on GNU/Linux, first you need to sacrifice a virgin. Then, you need to bury a chicken in the backyard of ...

Okay, it's a little easier than that.

  1. Install hotplug.
  2. Install PWC into hotplug. This black art requires knowledge from the PWC support page and the PWC hints page.
  3. Make sure /dev/video0 is readable/writable by pitcam, the user/group that will run motion.
  4. Install motion and run it using the configuration file in /proj/pitcam/conf/motion.conf.

Running It (currently from pitcam's crontab on @reboot)

$ cd /proj/pitcam/conf && sudo -u pitcam /proj/pitcam/bin/motion -D

Cleaning up after archives

Put the following into the pitcam user's crontab: 

@daily find /proj/pitcam/htdocs/archive -type d -name '20*' -mtime +32 -exec rm -rf {} \;

Errors

<7>pwc pwc_isoc_handler() called with status -84 [CRC/Timeout].

The system must be rebooted.

Miscellaneous

When working on the pitcam, make sure you're using our cool new Under Construction picture!

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