MotionEye Snapshotter

A simple tool that allows image snapshots to be made from cameras managed by MotionEye.

Features:

• take snapshots from cameras managed by MotionEye
• stores images
• simple web interface
• simple snapshot viewer
• provides a simple API that a device can call, initiating a snapshot, and returning a url to the snapshot

Usage Scenario

MotionEye Snapshotter is useful for when you have a lightweight IOT device that is used to trigger snapshots. For example a door monitoring system detects when a door is opened, which then tells MotionEye Snapshotter to take and store a timestamped snapshot of a camera facing the door.

Installation

Via go

• # go get -v github.com/smford/motioneye-snapshotter

From Git

Clone git repo and build yourself

• # git clone git@github.com:smford/motioneye-snapshotter.git
• # cd motioneye-snapshotter
• # go build

Docker

1. Create the docker volume to store configuration

   # docker volume create motioneye-snapshotter
   

2. Copy config.yaml and index.html to /var/lib/docker/volumes/motioneye-snapshotter/_data/
3. Start up motioneye-snapshotter

   # docker run --name motioneye-snapshotter -d --restart always -p 54036:5757/tcp -v motioneye-snapshotter:/config smford/motioneye-snapshotter:latest
   

Configuration

Configuring MotionEye Snapshotter

Create a configuration file called config.yaml an example is available below:

indexfile: /path/to/index.html
listenip: 0.0.0.0
listenport: 5757
meserver: http://127.0.0.1:8765
meuser: admin
snapshoturl: https://snapshots.mydomain.com
outputdir: /path/to/outputdir
cameras:
  1: main-door
  2: lobby
camerasigs:
  1: xxxxXXxxxxxXxxxx
  2: yyYYyYyyYYyYyyYy

Configuration File Options

Setting	Details
indexfile	the name and path to the file that is shown when people visit the main page of motioneye-snapshotter
listenip	The IP for simple-canary to listen to, 0.0.0.0 = all IPs
listenport	The port that simple-canary should listen on
meserver	The URL to the MotionEye Server
meuser	The MotionEye user to login and get the snapshot as
snapshoturl	Pretty URL for people to access the web interface of motioneye-snapshotter
outputdir	Directory to store all snapshots
cameras	A list of cameras, with 1 being the camera number within MotionEye, and main-door being the name you have chosen to easily identify the camera
camerasigs	A list of cameras and their snapshot signitures (details below)

How to Configure Cameras and also find the Camera Signature

The configuration for cameras needs to be pulled out from motioneye and is not easy to spot.

We first need to discover each cameras number and also its signature. The camera number is an internal identifier that motioneye uses to identify a camera. The camera signature is special string, unique to each camera, that is somewhat like a password.

1. Login as an admin user to motioneye web interface
2. Go to the configuration of the camera you are wanting
3. Expand "Video Streaming" then click "Snapshot URL". A small popup will appear, with a URL displayed similar to what is shown below.

   https://127.0.0.1/picture/1/current/?_username=admin&_signature=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMN
   

4. The camera number is the number in the URL directly after picture. In the above example it is 1
5. The camera signature is the string after _signature=. In the above example it is abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMN
6. Choose a nice human readable name for the camera, in this example we will use front-door
7. Here is the part of config.yaml we need to configure:

   ...
   cameras:
     1: front-door
     2: kitchen
   camerasigs:
     1: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMN
     2: xxxxXXxxxxxXxxxx
   ...
   

   You can now see in the configuration under cameras that 1: front-door where 1=camera number and front-door is the nice human readable name we chose for the camera. Under camerasigs just add the camera number and the cameras specific signature.

Starting motioneye-snapshotter

From command line

After creating the config.yaml and the index.html file simply run:

# motioneye-snapshotter --config /path/to/config.yaml

By Docker

See the instructions here https://github.com/smford/motioneye-snapshotter#docker

Configure Clients

• IoT Device detects that a door has opened and wants a snapshot of the main-door camera to be taken: Configure it to do an http request to: http://192.168.10.1:54036/snap?camera=main-door
• Using a cronjob to take snapshots every 5 minutes: */5 * * * * wget --spider "http://192.168.10.1:54036/snap?camera=main-door" >/dev/null 2>&1

Command Line Options

  --config [config file]             Configuration file: /path/to/file.yaml, default = ./config.yaml
  --displayconfig                    Display configuration
  --help                             Display help

API Endpoints

Assuming motioneye-snapshotter is configured to use 192.168.10.1:54036 and there is a camera called main-door

Task	URL	Result
Display index.html	http://192.168.10.1:54036/
Take a snapshot of main-door camera	http://192.168.10.1:54036/snap?camera=main-door	Returns path to snapshot taken
Browse cameras and the snapshots taken	http://192.168.10.1:54036/files
See what cameras are configured	http://192.168.10.1:54036/cameras
Download a specific snapshot	http://192.168.10.1:54036/files/main-door?file=20211012_124955.jpg	Downloads image