Cumulus Support

Thanks to BCJKiwi's script to convert sunrise and sunset times into a switch script with offset.
I now have 4 scripts Replacing dozens, i have one that starts the single webshot every 10 minutes and uploads to site between sunrise and sunset, one that does the hourly 2 hour mini time lapse between sunrise and sunset, one for the 3 hourly highlight jpgs and one that does the main daily timelapse 45 minutes before dawn and 45 minutes after dusk.
This is all don't using cumulus webtags and some dos scripts.

Most script are running now or been tweaked a little and are ready to go.

So thanks again BCJKiwi and others....

Looks good.

I must get working on doing something similar. I'm creating daily time-lapses but haven't decided on how to display them on the website.
I'm also going to drop down the upload frequency to every 5 minutes instead of every minute, the weather doesn't change THAT rapidly!

Tonight, I've updated the software to take images based on sunrise/sunset times. Stopping images about 12 minutes after sunset seems best. Starting time isn't as critical as the fog hangs around until 10AM or so.

It's fun isn't....

Just finished hand editing 17 pages of script, fixing little errors and double checking everything.


I think it's time I learnt powershell.......

Just removed all old script and switched to 5 only..
They take care of dawn/dusk single shot uploading, before dawn/after dusk keeping of jpg's for time lapse, creating hourly mini time lapse, taking and uploading highlight shots and finally creating and uploading main time lapse.
Also included is 24 hour motion detection, night ones uploaded to site, day ones put onto NAS drive to go through.

Now the waiting game to see if every thing goes smoothly!!!!!!

Still playing around with sunset/sunrise stuff. I've decided that 30minutes after sunset is the limit to a viewable picture so I'll make some changes to implement this tonight (one of the advantages of not having a TV is lots of spare time in the evening).

What size do your timelapse files end up as when you upload them to your website? I've found mine (640x480) end up at about 15MB which seems a bit big. (sample at http://port-huon.com.au/weather/webcam/timelapse.avi).

Regards
Geoff

Using ffmpeg and 480 profile which is a res of 720*480 mp4 with a size around 18MB

Think I have a few issues with scripts.......
Will have to Wait till I finish work
Don't think I'll be getting any time lapse either....

No 480 profile with my ffmpeg, perhaps that's a windows thing?
My timelapses are AVI format (MP4) at 640x480 and vary in size from 10 - 24 MB.

I've never tried scripting under Windows but it seems that it's fairly limited. Yah for Linux and bash!

Oh OK. The command I use for ffmpeg is ffmpeg -i FRAME%%04d.JPG -r 24 -threads 7 -s hd480 -b 1300k -vcodec libx264 myfile1.mp4 -y

If that can help. My sourse file are 720p taken every 17 seconds.

Command line I use is:

mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:aspect=16/9:vbitrate=8000000 -vf scale=680:480 -o test2.avi -mf type=jpeg:fps=24 mf://@FileList

Due to the extra processing that is done, the best the Pi camera can do is one image ever 45 seconds or so, that includes uploading to the website.

tumutbound wrote:Due to the extra processing that is done, the best the Pi camera can do is one image ever 45 seconds or so, that includes uploading to the website.

Really, That sucks, I was going to update to a Pi setup to......

It's not too bad really as during that time, the camera:

1. Takes 3 images with different settings
2. Combines all three to create an HDR image
3. Inserts GPS info as EXIF data
4. Overlays the date/time (and soon weather info) on the image
5. Uploads it to the website

It also takes care of uploading a copy of each image taken to my local server and produces the timelapse every night.

I have another Pi with a camera module so I'll play around a bit and see how many images a second it can take without the extra processing.

Regards
Geoff

That's not too bad than, I suppose I'm lucky to have the grunt of a media PC and a NAS as storage!!!

I like the idea of the camera being able to handle all the work. If my computer is off the air for a few days, if I'm away for example, then the images still get taken and uploaded, Actually I have to leave my server on as it runs Cumulus (in a VM)

BTW, I just ran a quick python script as was able to take five, 1024 x 768, images in about 6 seconds. I'll do this during daylight to see what the quality is like.
Sorry to hijack your thread

Hijack all you like, I'm notorious for it.

My poor media center is on 18 hours a day, thanks to the family recording everything they can!
Cumulus also runs on it as well....

Tonight will be first time since begining that I've missed creating a time lapse!!!

I will create a thread on Pi camera options in the Homebrew section (I think that's where my Pi camera posts are) but ...

Using the video capture option, but taking single images, not a video stream, I was able to take 600 images at a rate of 11 frames per second. That should be fast enough!