Smart Security Camera

An Internet of things security camera that notifies users via SMS, WhatsApp, and/or shared network folder when it detects motion, powered by Raspberry Pi, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Twilio.

See my blog post about this project.

📝 Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Software Used
• Contributing
• Authors
• Acknowledgments

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Build Kit

• Raspberry Pi
  • I used a Raspberry Pi Zero W.
• Camera
  • I used the Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2.

Prerequisites

This project is built in Python 3, so use pip3 to install packages using bash:

sudo apt install python3-pip

To enable support for messaging, AWS S3 and Twilio (or a similar cloud storage platform and messaging API, respectively) are needed.

Refer to the AWS guide for S3, for a guide on how to use S3 to store the media files.

Refer to the Twilio documentation, for a guide on how to use the Twilio API to send messages.

To enable sharing on a network folder, refer to the Ubuntu mounting walkthrough, for a guide on how to mount a shared folder on a Raspberry Pi.

Installing

Clone the repository by running:

git clone https://github.com/kdutta9/Smart-Surveillance.git

I recommend using a virtual environment, using virtualenv, for the project, to ensure there are no errors with dependencies. Make sure you create in the virtual environment in the project directory.

• Installing virtualenv

   sudo pip3 install virtualenv

• Creating a virtual environment of some name (i.e. venv)

   cd Smart-Surveillance
   virtualenv venv

• Activating virtual environment

   source venv/bin/activate

Then, install the required packages.

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

If needed, modify config.json with your API keys and then use the following to run the application:

python3 main.py

If you need to run the application as the root user, modify and execute the script run.sh as such:

./run.sh

Software Used

• Python
• OpenCV - Object Detection
• ImUtils - Image Processing
• Amazon Web Services - Cloud Storage
• Twilio - Messaging API

Authors

• @kdutta9
• Adrian Rosebrock: I used Adrian's guide to motion detection and use of the Twilio API, linked in Acknowledgements, to guide my project.

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

Acknowledgements

• Inspiration for using the Twilio API: Adrian Rosebrock
• Inspiration for motion detection: Adrian Rosebrock
• Inspiration for using a network folder: Website for Students