Building a home monitoring system with raspberry pi and a usb webcam

Why ?

• I have 2 dogs, and I wanted to monitor their activity during the day (especially when one of them was a puppy)
• I didn't want an expensive home monitoring solution (I have a couple of raspberry pi's lying around and wanted to just use an existing usb webcam)

Instructions

Install fswebcam on bare minimum install on a raspberry pi.

First check and make sure that your usb web cam is being detected

lsusb

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 17ef:6014 Lenovo Mini
Wireless Keyboard N5901

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:0825 Logitech, Inc.
Webcam C270

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard
Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard
Microsystems Corp. 

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation
2.0 root hub

Then, install the fswebcam package:

sudo apt-get install fswebcam




Basic usage

Enter the command fswebcam followed by a filename and a picture will be taken using the webcam, and saved to the filename specified:

fswebcam image.jpg

This command will show the following information:

--- Opening /dev/video0...
Trying source module v4l2...
/dev/video0 opened.
No input was specified, using the first.
Adjusting resolution from 384x288 to 352x288.
--- Capturing frame...
Corrupt JPEG data: 2 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd4
Captured frame in 0.00 seconds.
--- Processing captured image...
Writing JPEG image to 'image.jpg'.

Note the small default resolution used, and the presence of a banner showing the timestamp.

SPECIFY RESOLUTION

The webcam used in this example has a resolution of 1280 x 720 so to specify the resolution I want the image to be taken at, use the -r flag:

fswebcam -r 1280x720 image2.jpg

This command will show the following information:

--- Opening /dev/video0...
Trying source module v4l2...
/dev/video0 opened.
No input was specified, using the first.
--- Capturing frame...
Corrupt JPEG data: 1 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd5
Captured frame in 0.00 seconds.
--- Processing captured image...
Writing JPEG image to 'image2.jpg'.

Picture now taken at the full resolution of the webcam, with the banner present.

SPECIFY NO BANNER

Now add the --no-banner flag:

fswebcam -r 1280x720 --no-banner image3.jpg

which shows the following information:

--- Opening /dev/video0...
Trying source module v4l2...
/dev/video0 opened.
No input was specified, using the first.
--- Capturing frame...
Corrupt JPEG data: 2 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd6
Captured frame in 0.00 seconds.
--- Processing captured image...
Disabling banner.
Writing JPEG image to 'image3.jpg'.




I ended up selecting a smb share on my home file server and periodically storing the pictures to it

End Result !