RPi Cam Web Interface

[btidey]

Hi Robert,

Unfortunately I have been experiencing the same issue today. I can't change any values at all. I tried to reboot but to no avail.

Is there anything I can check?

Thanks a lot!

If you are seeing the settings on the motion page then that indicates that motion can read them OK and can feed them back to the web page via its interface.

If you change a value and press Save and the setting doesn't get preserved then that is most likely because motion can't write the new values back to /etc/motion/motion.conf because of permission problems.

When motion is running it should be running under the user www-data. You can check that by issuing the command

Code: Select all

ps -Af

That shows all the processes running with details. You should see motion in the list with www-data on the left. If it has a different user then check the user for raspimjpeg which should also be www-data. If that is not then something is wrong with the start up in rc.local as that starts the process with www-data.

Now check the permission of the motion.conf file with

Code: Select all

sudo ls -l /etc/motion

You should see an entry like
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data 24064 Jul 2 12:04 motion.conf

That shows that this file is owned by www-data which has read/write permissions on this file

If yours is different then something has gone wrong with the install as it should have set these.

You can fix it by

Code: Select all

sudo chown www-data:www-data /etc/motion/motion.conf
sudo chmod 664 /etc/motion/motion.conf

[harlock74]

Now check the permission of the motion.conf file with

Code: Select all

sudo ls -l /etc/motion

You should see an entry like
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data 24064 Jul 2 12:04 motion.conf

That shows that this file is owned by www-data which has read/write permissions on this file

Hi Robert,
Many thanks for coming back to me.

I have checked that and everything looks OK to me:

Code: Select all

$ sudo ls -l /etc/motion
total 40
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi   www-data 23484 Jul  3 00:11 motion.conf

I am just thinking to re-install everything from scratch. I don't have any issues with the other two RPi's. Indeed I can edit the motion.conf file. Go and figure!

Thanks again for looking at it!

[slabua]

The web interface just passes the annotation template string as it exists through to the raspimjpeg process whenever you change it so it isn't dynamically involved. The raspimjpeg process interprets the string for every jpeg live image requested. The processed string just gets sent into the MMAL annotation call.

At the moment I don't see any place where the number of spaces would change on our side.

Is the date in your second shot wrapped on to the second line? That would imply that maybe it is the wrapping logic of the Annotation process could be sensitive to the content. It is always a bit risky to rely on spaces to control this sort of thing as I suspect Annotation was intended as a 1 liner and you are relying on side effects.

It might be worth posting the question in the thread viewtopic.php?f=43&t=97929

In my second shot the configuration is the same as the first one but lacking of only the leading spaces, so the date starts at the beginning of the first line, then the spaces between date and time push the time up to that point.
Thanks, I'll keep an eye on that other thread, too.

[slabua]

The web interface just passes the annotation template string as it exists through to the raspimjpeg process whenever you change it so it isn't dynamically involved.

I've reproduced the issue, and maybe I can explain better what happens if my previous posts were a bit confusing.
The annotation doesn't ever change randomly, but when using an annotation with leading spaces, after reopening the web interface, the annotation field is filled with data read from uconfig, but without being able to read the leading spaces contained in the file itself. So the problem is that the web page eats the leading spaces.

EDIT: Perhaps the issue lies in the function makeInput of index.php and how it reads the values to fill the fields in index.php itself?

[btidey]

The web interface just passes the annotation template string as it exists through to the raspimjpeg process whenever you change it so it isn't dynamically involved.

I've reproduced the issue, and maybe I can explain better what happens if my previous posts were a bit confusing.
The annotation doesn't ever change randomly, but when using an annotation with leading spaces, after reopening the web interface, the annotation field is filled with data read from uconfig, but without being able to read the leading spaces contained in the file itself. So the problem is that the web page eats the leading spaces.

EDIT: Perhaps the issue lies in the function makeInput of index.php and how it reads the values to fill the fields in index.php itself?

Ok. Yes. I had misunderstood and thought you meant it was jumping around.

Yes. It's quite possible that when index reads the uconfig values it is stripping spaces. I'll check that out.

Edit: Reading config files is in config.php and it is trimming values. I could probably avoid the trim as it is fairly safe given that these values are written by the program.

Edit2: Change made. Leading space preserved when reading values from uconfig

[slabua]

I have another question, this time about the motion config file and the scheduler.
I have not quite understood the relation between on_event_start, on_event_end in the motion config file and the Motion Start and Motion Stop fields in the daily periods of the scheduler.

1. At first, I thought that if those two parameters in motion.conf are set, the recording is triggered even when the two fields in the scheduler are empty (and that's what indeed happens, so there shouldn't be the need to populate those two fields with ca 1 and ca 0 - Period Start serves to enable/disable the whole motion capturing).

2. Then, I tried commenting out those two parameters in motion.conf, and use ca 1 and ca 0 in the scheduler because I thought that would trigger the recording by piping instead of by reading motion.conf. Am I correct? Because it doesn't seem to work for me.

Of course those two fields in the scheduler can be used to also capture an image upon motion start, and so on, but my question is peculiar to the redundancy of the start/stop recording commands upon motion detection.
If my assumption 2. is correct, then I would prefer, for instance, keeping motion.conf clean from those options and only use the scheduler.

[slabua]

Edit2: Change made. Leading space preserved when reading values from uconfig

Great, thank you : )

Edit: hm, it doesn't seem to work. If I stop the camera, then I click again start camera, the leading spaces are gone again. Is this beyond the reading by the web page?

[btidey]

Edit2: Change made. Leading space preserved when reading values from uconfig

Great, thank you : )

Edit: hm, it doesn't seem to work. If I stop the camera, then I click again start camera, the leading spaces are gone again. Is this beyond the reading by the web page?

Yes. I just tested stopping and starting web interface but I think raspimjpeg may be trimming strings on start up as well. Of course people can manually edit the main raspimjpeg config and I was trying to avoid getting things like leading spaces contaminating other strings like file templates if a user is careless entering stuff. I don't want to start getting into quotes at this stage so maybe I just make annotation a special case as I think that is the only string where this may matter.

[btidey]

I have another question, this time about the motion config file and the scheduler.
I have not quite understood the relation between on_event_start, on_event_end in the motion config file and the Motion Start and Motion Stop fields in the daily periods of the scheduler.

1. At first, I thought that if those two parameters in motion.conf are set, the recording is triggered even when the two fields in the scheduler are empty (and that's what indeed happens, so there shouldn't be the need to populate those two fields with ca 1 and ca 0 - Period Start serves to enable/disable the whole motion capturing).

2. Then, I tried commenting out those two parameters in motion.conf, and use ca 1 and ca 0 in the scheduler because I thought that would trigger the recording by piping instead of by reading motion.conf. Am I correct? Because it doesn't seem to work for me.

Of course those two fields in the scheduler can be used to also capture an image upon motion start, and so on, but my question is peculiar to the redundancy of the start/stop recording commands upon motion detection.
If my assumption 2. is correct, then I would prefer, for instance, keeping motion.conf clean from those options and only use the scheduler.

In the original scheme motion sent commands straight into the raspimjpeg pipe (FIFO). These were then ca 1 and ca 0. When the scheduler was introduced a second pipe was introduced (FIFO1) that scheduler monitors. This is used by scheduler to accept motion trigger requests from either the external motion program or the internal motion detector built into raspimjpeg. These requests are simple 1 (start) and 0 (stop) as they are just a signal to the scheduler. It then decides what to do with these and can send for example ca 1 and ca 0 onto the raspimjpeg pipe (FIFO) for just simple video start and stop.

So in the normal set up motion echos just 1 and 0 to FIFO1 for start and end triggers into the scheduler and it then determines the configured actions which can include multiple commands according to the set up, time of day etc.

One can choose to bypass the scheduler altogether and set motion up to send the original ca 1 and ca 0 straight into raspimjpeg. You lose the flexibility of the scheduler and it also won't work with the raspimjpeg internal motion detector as this is programmed to send triggers to the scheduler.

[btidey]

Edit: hm, it doesn't seem to work. If I stop the camera, then I click again start camera, the leading spaces are gone again. Is this beyond the reading by the web page?

Yes. I just tested stopping and starting web interface but I think raspimjpeg may be trimming strings on start up as well.

raspimjpeg now skips trimming annotation strings.

[slabua]

@btidey Thanks for explaining about motion, it's all clear now : )
And yes please, if the use of quotes is possible/necessary at least for the annotation case, it would be nice~

- going to pull from repo now, thanks a lot!

[miraaz]

Now check the permission of the motion.conf file with

Code: Select all

sudo ls -l /etc/motion

You should see an entry like
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data 24064 Jul 2 12:04 motion.conf

That shows that this file is owned by www-data which has read/write permissions on this file

Hi Robert,
Many thanks for coming back to me.

I have checked that and everything looks OK to me:

Code: Select all

$ sudo ls -l /etc/motion
total 40
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi   www-data 23484 Jul  3 00:11 motion.conf

I am just thinking to re-install everything from scratch. I don't have any issues with the other two RPi's. Indeed I can edit the motion.conf file. Go and figure!

Thanks again for looking at it!

You installed using old buggy installer. That bug already fixed now.
viewtopic.php?p=782205#p782205

btidey that code not fix that bug! User mast be motion not www-data. www-data have group rights but still cant edit motion.conf

Code: Select all

sudo chown www-data:www-data /etc/motion/motion.conf
sudo chmod 664 /etc/motion/motion.conf

Fix is:

Code: Select all

sudo chown motion:www-data /etc/motion/motion.conf

[miraaz]

Now check the permission of the motion.conf file with

Code: Select all

sudo ls -l /etc/motion

You should see an entry like
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data 24064 Jul 2 12:04 motion.conf

That shows that this file is owned by www-data which has read/write permissions on this file

Hi Robert,
Many thanks for coming back to me.

I have checked that and everything looks OK to me:

Code: Select all

$ sudo ls -l /etc/motion
total 40
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi   www-data 23484 Jul  3 00:11 motion.conf

I am just thinking to re-install everything from scratch. I don't have any issues with the other two RPi's. Indeed I can edit the motion.conf file. Go and figure!

Thanks again for looking at it!

harlock74 you motion.conf have wrong owner "pi" mast be "motion"
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data <- OK
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi www-data <-NOT OK

[harlock74]

Now check the permission of the motion.conf file with

Code: Select all

sudo ls -l /etc/motion

You should see an entry like
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data 24064 Jul 2 12:04 motion.conf

That shows that this file is owned by www-data which has read/write permissions on this file

Hi Robert,
Many thanks for coming back to me.

I have checked that and everything looks OK to me:

Code: Select all

$ sudo ls -l /etc/motion
total 40
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi   www-data 23484 Jul  3 00:11 motion.conf

I am just thinking to re-install everything from scratch. I don't have any issues with the other two RPi's. Indeed I can edit the motion.conf file. Go and figure!

Thanks again for looking at it!

harlock74 you motion.conf have wrong owner "pi" mast be "motion"
-rw-rw-r-- 1 motion www-data <- OK
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pi www-data <-NOT OK

Hi miraaz,

Sorry my mistake. Thanks for pointing that out. That did the trick indeed!

[slabua]

I made a little change to the preview.php page, adding a combo box to choose whether to display both images and videos, only images or only videos.

The rationale behind it is that, usually, I prefer to sort the thumbs in descending order, but having the videos also along, they would always show before the images per naming convention.

If it's useful I'll push it to the repo.

[btidey]

I made a little change to the preview.php page, adding a combo box to choose whether to display both images and videos, only images or only videos.

The rationale behind it is that, usually, I prefer to sort the thumbs in descending order, but having the videos also along, they would always show before the images per naming convention.

If it's useful I'll push it to the repo.

Yes. It sounds good. Push it.

The other filter I had thought might be useful but haven't got around to doing was a Day selector for say the last week plus All. Probably would want to be made relative like today, yesterday, 2 days ago etc.

[slabua]

Yes. It sounds good. Push it.

The other filter I had thought might be useful but haven't got around to doing was a Day selector for say the last week plus All. Probably would want to be made relative like today, yesterday, 2 days ago etc.

It's up.

Yes, that may be useful too.

[Gary Littlemore]

WOW Just upgraded, the upgrade script has all changed

[miraaz]

WOW Just upgraded, the upgrade script has all changed

Nice you like it . More upgrades coming soon .

[Gary Littlemore]

WOW Just upgraded, the upgrade script has all changed

Nice you like it . More upgrades coming soon .

Has the Wiki been updated with what all the options do?

[Gary Littlemore]

In the 'Download Videos and images' I've now got strange text that's appeared since upgrading...

image.jpg (30.26 KiB) Viewed 2633 times

[btidey]

In the 'Download Videos and images' I've now got strange text that's appeared since upgrading...

image.jpg

Sorry. I left some debug in. Fixing now.

Edit Fixed

[Gary Littlemore]

Could the filter that's always at the bottom of the page be moved to the top?

image.jpg (12.67 KiB) Viewed 2603 times

[southafricanrob]

Hi,
I'm using the default settings and have pretty slow and choppy video on a decent speed wifi network. I have tried tweaking some settings but nothing really has much of an impact. Any suggestions on which settings will have the most impact to get a nice smooth video stream?

[jussi24]

Olegg had made a useful pull request adding support for a second camera if using the compute module not a standard Pi.

That's highly interesting. I thought of it since the first cam module I bought. Are there more information available? I know about a second CSI port that is available on the Broadcom chip. Is it identical in connectivity and (GPU-) features? How is double displaying/preview and other things realized in raspimjpeg? What about GPU-limitations when processing both streams simultaneously? Or is it a switching (either/or) concept?