RaspberryPi/Timelapse2

Outline: Raspbian

The issue with using Kali was, the use of the camera required onboard video libraries that did not come bundled with Kali. These were also not in the aptitude repositories, and I had no luck installing them. So for the camera project I decided to go with Raspbian and not sink any more time into getting Kali to work with camera hardware.

pi/raspberry

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi
• Pi camera
• Camera case
• Network cable
• Power cable

Setting up the Pi

To begin with, I installed a fresh Kali Linux arm image. I wanted to make sure I had installed the operating system correctly and that I could reach the Pi just fine. I connected the Pi directly to my laptop using a crossover cable. After connecting the two, I restarted both machines. They automatically picked link-local addresses at 169.254.X.Y, which I was able to use to SSH directly into the Pi.

This confirmed that I had everything working ok on the Pi.

Connecting to the Pi

I connected the Pi to a router, set a fixed IP address on the boot line of cmdline.txt on the memory card's boot sector, and plugged it into my home router. I then fired up the Pi.

SSH to 192.168.0.111 confirmed I was able to remotely reach the Pi. The Pi was also able to successfully reach the gateway and the outside internet.

Installing stuff

Get busy installing stuff:

apt-get install -y screen
screen

In the new screen window:

apt-get install -y vim aptitude
apt-get install -y python build-essential
apt-get install -y python-pip

This doesn't do much - most everything here is already installed.

Now install the pi camera library (should also be already installed):

pip install picamera

Now one last thing to do before testing the camera is to enable the boot flag that lets you use the camera (disabled by default).

Run raspi-config and pick the camera menu item (number 6). Choose to enable the camera. Save changes, and you'll be asked to reboot the Pi. Reboot the Pi. Now you can try out the camera.

Testing Picamera

Open python and try to import the picamera library:

import picamera

Now try capturing your first photo:

import picamera
camera = picamera.PiCamera()
camera.capture('helloworld.jpg')

Woo hoo! Works perfect!

Problems out of nowhere

Suddenly, out of nowhere, just when I had finished rigging the wireless and the zip ties and the camera box, everything failed. The camera would no longer respond. Hardware connection problem. Tear it all apart.

Resolution

The problems that came out of nowhere turned out to be connection problems with the flat yellow plate on the front of the camera face. I had to re-seat that plate snugly. After that, the camera worked fine.

Next Steps

Next steps consisted of testing, one step at a time, each aspect of the configuration. The steps were as follows:

With crossover cable:

• Crossover cable, 169.254.111.111, test local ssh to Pi - PASSED
• Crossover cable, 169.254.111.111, test whether we can capture a photo from the camera - PASSED

With wireless: RaspberryPi/Wireless

• Wireless, 192.168.0.X, test whether we can connect to the wireless - PASSED
• Wireless, 192.168.0.X, test whether we can auto-MAGIC-ally connect to the wireless on boot - PASSED
• Wireless, 192.168.0.X, test whether we can plug in on other side of house, ssh in, start/finish photo capture, run http server - PASSED
• Wireless, 192.168.0.X, test whether we can capture photos, with everything taped into position -
• Wireless, 192.168.0.X, test whether we can run a time lapse test

Last Steps

DO IT!!! Take a timelapse for 2 seconds at a time.

Scripting

To script taking a picture, use the following code, which loops forever, taking photos and marking them with timestamps:

# pic.py

import picamera
from datetime import datetime
import time

camera = picamera.PiCamera()

while True:

    prefix = datetime.strftime(datetime.now(),"photo_%Y%m%d-%H%M%S")
    filename = prefix+".jpg"

    camera.capture(filename)
    print "Saving photo to %s"%(filename)

    time.sleep(2)