Tusacam was created to fulfill the need of a cheap and simple surveillance system that had their own storage (no cloud required), ran on an inexpensive platform and was simple to operate.
The end result is a simple web app intended to run on a Raspberry PI that starts recording on the Pi camera based on the output of a motion sensor and stores the resulting video so that using the app you can browse recorded videos, define basic storage policies (how much space you want your recorded videos to take and how long you want to keep them), replay videos and have a basic live preview of what the camera is seeing at any moment.
The hardware used is:
- Raspberry Pi: Development was done on a Pi 3B+, but any Pi that has a camera slot should suffice
- Pi Camera: either the PiNoir or the standard Pi Camera can be used
- Motion sensor: I used the HC-SR501 PIR sensor
This environment ensures that all the python modules and packages needed are available without messing up your system global python configuration
virtualenv -p python3 <environment folder>
From now on the <app folder> will be the "tusacam" folder inside the
location where you have cloned the repo, so if you are at /home/pi and
do a git clone the <app folder> will be /home/pi/tusacam
Activate your virtual environment and install the python packages
source <environment folder>/bin/activate
pip install <app folder>/requirements.txt
First, generate a secret key by, for example, using what is provided by this handy service and changing it to suit your tastes (do not leave the default value provided just in case someone hijacks that site) Since the resulting key is likely to include characters systemd does not like you may need to run the result via the systemd-escape utility to get a value that you can use in systemd service configuration files.
Once you have a key you can use in systemd, copy the result into the clipboard. You will need that later to configure your services
Create the Django root user, will be the one you use to log into the app. You may want to create the superuser first and then use the admin module in /admin to create regular users that can login without admin powers. Tusacam is a rather simple app so unless you enrich it a lot you're not likely going to need much more than an admin user.
source <environment folder>/bin/activate
cd <app folder>
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py collectstatic
python manage.py createsuperuser
Allow the static content to be collected and provide user name and password as responses to the prompts
Configure the PiCamera settings by changing the values in
<app folder>/tusacam/settings.py
First install apache and mods
sudo apt-get install apache libapache2-mod-xsendfile libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3
Edit the apache configuration file
sudo vim /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
XSendFile On
XSendFilePath /home/pi/capture/
# We use user=pi because our app is installed on a folder that is
# read-write accessible by the user pi
WSGIDaemonProcess tusacam user=pi processes=2 threads=4 python-home=<environment folder> python-path=<app folder>
WSGIProcessGroup tusacam
WSGIScriptAlias / <app folder>/tusacam/wsgi.py process-group=tusacam
Alias /robots.txt <app folder>/static/robots.txt
Alias /favicon.ico <app folder>/static/favicon.ico
Alias /static <app folder>/collectstatic
<Directory <app folder>/collectstatic>
Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory <app folder>/tusacam>
<Files wsgi.py>
Require all granted
</Files>
</Directory>
Open your apache2 service configuration with
sudo vim /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service and in the [Service]
section add the line
Environment=DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=<your secret key>
Execute on a console
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/tusacam.service
Type the following and exit nano saving changes:
[Unit]
Description=Tusacam service
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Environment=DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=<your secret key>
WorkingDirectory=<app folder>
ExecStart=<environment folder>/bin/python manage.py camera_server
Type=idle
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Now run the command
sudo systemctl enable tusacam.service
To manually start the service do a
sudo systemctl start tusacam.service
At this point you should be able to access the web app from the
http://<your IP IP address>/browse URL from any device in your
network. You should be able to see if it is working by moving something
in from of the motion sensor. If all goes well you should be able to
see a live preview of the camera and see/change the storage policies.
You may want to adjust to trigger delay and range of the motion sensor using its two dials, I found a nice explanation here
Depending on your Pi model, you may have many different network interfaces available to connect your Pi to your home network. Plus, in my case, I have a WiFi dongle with extra sized antennas to use in my home for places where the WiFi signal is weak and I do not want to use a repeater or similar device.
Having your Pi in different IP addresses is a problem if you plan to make it available over the internet, as if you have a domestic router your only chance of being able to access something inside your home network from the internet is to place a rule in your home router that diverts incoming traffice from a certain port to a specific IP address inside your network. Thus, that IP address inside your network has to remain constant no matter how you connect your Pi to your home network (wireless or cable)
I'm including these steps as it has been one of the most frustrating
parts of the entire setup. Apparently, the latest Raspberry version
is ok with using the same IP address for many interfaces and is just
able to use this simple setup in the /etc/dhcpcd.conf for
each network interface (eth0, wlan0, wlan1, etc)
interface <interface name>
ipv4only
noipv6rs
nodhcp
static ip_address=<your fixed IP address>/24
static routers=<your router IP>
static domain_name_servers=<your domain name servers>