orwell

Records only when motion is detected. Use "forever" to make sure the node process stays alive.

How to Install

Testing using node v10.24.1 (npm v6.14.12) and node v9.11.2 (npm v5.6.0).

Install NPM dependencies:

npm install

then for macs using brew:

brew install imagemagick

For Windows, visit the imagemagick website for installation instructions:

http://www.imagemagick.org/

For creating mp4s. ffmpeg is required:

https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt_authoring/wiki/Installing-FFmpeg

How to Run

Run recorder, provide username, password then ip address of the IP Cam:

node app.js admin myPassword 10.0.0.170

Process captured images:

# create mp4 from captured images:
node makeMp4.js

# create gif from captured images:
node makeGif.js

(Note: gifs don't work well, when video is long in duration).

Features

• Timestamped image captures
• Only captured images when motion detected
• Tools to create gif or mp4

Screenshots

Additional Notes

Under the covers, this project uses https://github.com/mmaelzer/motion to detect motion. Repository created for personal use only. Tested with DLink DCS-930LB1 HW: B2. However, any IP Cam that provides a "/mjpeg.cgi" stream should be supported.

About 20,000 images creates a video file that is around 13 minutes.

How to Get IP address of Your Webcam

This can be tricky, since I have only tested this using a dlink camera, I'll only be able to explain that here. Please open a Pull Request (modifying this file) if you have any insight into additional cameras.

mydlink.com allows you to modify the settings of your camera, when you view "My Devices" you may be able to find a link which will tell you the IP address of your camera.

Unfortunately, mydlink.com only supports some outdated versions of internet explorer on a windows machine. So there are other methods of finding the IP address of your cam.

Try using nmap (brew install nmap on a mac) then running:

nmap -p80 10.0.0.0/24 -oG - | grep 80/open

You will see an output of IP addresses, try going to them in a browser, and seeing you get any text. Red text means you found the Dlink cam, you can also try appending mjpeg.cgi, so it would look like this http://10.0.0.168/mjpeg.cgi

File Overview

• utils - this folder includes some linux scripts that can facilitate managing a large number of captured images
• utils/count.sh - counts the number of files inside a particular folder

TODO

• Make a directory called "timestamped_video" on initial setup of the makeMp4.js file, we need to be careful not to delete it, if it already exists
• Add a status node script that gives us the number of files, and possibly the length of the resulting MP4. The number of MP4s, size and length.
• Writing to file print time and date information, as well as Connection Ended time
• Add instructions for Raspian (libav-tools) and creating an alias for avconv
• Fix so that it works with latest node (currently there is an error using node v15 and running npm install)'

Debugging

If you see this error:

Connection Appears Successful. Proceeding to watch for motion...
events.js:165
      throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
      ^

Error: spawn convert ENOENT
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:201:19)

You are missing imagemagick, please see the Install section of this README

If you just see Connection Ended in red, then it could mean your username or password are not correct.