ipcamera_bot

This is a telegram bot that fetches a live record from an IP Camera using RTSP protocol, motivated by me going on trips and wanting to keep an eye on my cats.

Written in Rust, made to be deployed locally in your network using an old Android phone through Termux.

Commands available

• /get_live: retrieves 5 seconds of live record from one or multiple IP Cameras using the RTSP protocol.
  • Cameras and recording settings can be setup in a JSON file that can be found with the absolute path specified in the CAMERA_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.
  • This command can be renamed with the GET_RECORD_COMMAND environment variable (default: /get_live)

You may also send these commands directly to the bot instead of adding it to a chat.

Running it locally

Environment:

• Make sure you have Rust installed and updated in your laptop.
• Make sure you have your IP Camera on the same network as your laptop. (tip: you can use VLC to test it out)

Setup:

• Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/armand1m/ipcamera_bot
• Make your camera_config.json file: cp example_camera_config.json camera_config.json
• Edit the camera_config.json to correspond to your camera desired setup.
• Make your .env.: cp .env-example .env
• Edit the .env accordingly. Setup your bot father token, ip camera url, username, password, and path to the camera config json file.

Now you should be good to get started with.

• For development: cargo run

• For production:

  cargo build --release
  ./target/release/ipcamera_bot

Running with Docker

Only works on Linux, because host networking in Docker for Mac cannot make this work.

Setup:

• Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/armand1m/ipcamera_bot
• Make your .env.: cp .env-example .env
• Edit the .env accordingly. Setup your bot father token, ip camera url, username, password, and properties.
• Start app using docker-compose:

  docker-compose up

Running it on termux

I made this bot to be run on an old Android phone through Termux. This is how you can get it setup.

Setup Termux

Install Termux as recommended in their official API. I would recommend using F-Droid, as it is pretty easy. Make sure to have these packages installed through F-Droid:

- Termux
- Termux API

Setup runit (through termux-services) and SSH

Access termux and install termux-services, git and openssh

pkg install termux-services 

Setup openssh

You probably want to ssh into your phone from your laptop instead of typing all of this in your phone. (you could be using a bluetooth keyboard, but you know what I mean, don't do this)

Install openssh:

pkg install openssh

To start the openssh service:

# enable sshd
sv-enable sshd

# start sshd
sv up sshd

# check sshd status
sv status sshd

You can check for service logs like this:

tail -f $LOGDIR/sv/sshd/current

sshd in termux comes with password authentication enabled by default (you can check with cat $PREFIX/etc/ssh/sshd_config), so if everything is ok, you can run passwd to setup a password.

sshd will be running on port 8022. You can connect in your computer using the following:

ssh root@<phone-ip> -p 8022

Use the password you've setup with passwd. You can get the ip with ifconfig.

Acquire wake lock

To avoid the Android OS from sleeping your Termux process, use the termux-wake-lock command to prompt a wake lock for it.

You can also do it from Android GUI in your notification panel.

Setup ipcamera_bot environment

Make sure you have git and rust installed on your termux:

pkg install git
pkg install rust

You might also want vi:

pkg install vi

Now we should be good to clone and build the project:

• Create a folder ~/Projects and cd into it: mkdir ~/Projects && cd ~/Projects
• Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/armand1m/ipcamera_bot
• cd into it: cd ~/Projects/ipcamera_bot
• Make your .env.: cp ~/Projects/ipcamera_bot/.env-example ~/Projects/ipcamera_bot/.env
• Edit the .env accordingly. Setup your bot father token, ip camera url, username, password, and properties.
  • vi ~/Projects/ipcamera_bot/.env

Once done, build the project:

cd ~/Projects/ipcamera_bot
cargo build --release

And now you should have a release build in ~/Projects/ipcamera_bot/target/release/ipcamera_bot

Setup ipcamera_bot on runit

Run the setup-ipcamera-svc-logger.sh script to setup the runit logger:

~/Projects/ipcamera_bot/scripts/termux-setup/setup-ipcamera-svc-logger.sh

Run the setup-ipcamera-svc-runner.sh script to setup the runit runner:

~/Projects/ipcamera_bot/scripts/termux-setup/setup-ipcamera-svc-runner.sh

You can check if it is up with:

sv status ipcamera_bot
# run: ipcamera_bot: (pid 29368) 1428s, normally down; run: log: (pid 5798) 11062s

You should be all set to start the service now:

sv up ipcamera_bot

You should be able to read the logs with:

tail -f $LOGDIR/sv/ipcamera_bot/current

Terminate the server with:

sv down ipcamera_bot

runit by default sets up log rotation with up to 10 files with max 1mb each. Once current reached the max size, it gets renamed and a new current is created.

Starting up on boot

Check https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:Boot