After some discussion with various Boileroom attendees so far we think it would be nice to have one or two webcams running for a variety of reasons - security being one, but I can imagine it would be handy for someone to go on the site and see what we’re up to.
I also had the idea that we could automatically create a time lapse video of our regular sessions, and upload them. I think it would be a nice effect to capture the goings-on, and for any curious minds to see what we did and what kind of stuff goes on at a regular meeting.
My thoughts are that we get a Raspi Zero and Pi Cam for this - they’re pretty cheap and easy to use. There will definitely already be a Raspi for the access control system, so whether we can place this somewhere useful for a camera or not might be the trick.
Does anyone know of cheap suppliers for the cameras and Pis? Pimoroni sell a Raspberry Pi Zero for £4, and a camera for £24.
trouble with the RPI-Zero is that I think it needs an adaptor ribbon cable
because it’s connector is smaller, so when you add things up it may not be
much cheaper
Oh I didn’t spot that, thanks Alan. The adapter cable isn’t too bad at £4 though, not the worst thing in the world.
They also do this kit which is nifty, though void of a camera means it’s pricey. Nice effect though, if only we knew somewhere that we could use a laser cutter…
A regular USB webcam would also work.
Depends what the goal is.
If Pi related then MotionEyeOS (https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki/Installation) is a good place the start.
Easy to install and works with the PiCamera as well as most USB webcams.
If the goal is to store the images then the PiZero’s single USB port port becomes a problem.
I think it would be worth having the capability to record the video too, for security. I was thinking something like a ZoneMinder server somewhere, if the rPi can be coerced into presenting the video in a compatible way.
From what I read, it’s certainly beneficial to use a Pi Camera as it takes practically no CPU cycles to run one with its direct connection to the GPU. With USB webcams the situation is different, and if we use the same Pi that is running the access system we certainly use the freed up performance.
My thoughts were that at some point we’ll have a space NFS of some description and the videos can be put there.
