Monitoring
My problem at this point is how to turn on/off the heavier algorithms and not run the cameras all the time. Even right now I am showing that the power consumption is around .2kw/h which is a bit much to add anything into.
With the current consumption it looks like I need to have some better power management. Something I can change on the fly or be intelligent about when to be on/off.
I need to have a sentry running that is only partially watching.
Ubuntu Monitor
There appears to be a nice monitoring app that is on github.
https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion
I think it is going to track change in screen - so movement.
apt install monitor
I think that was about all I needed to do.
Monitor Configuration
Motion is able to process images from many different types of cameras. The following is brief overview of the process to set up the Motion software.
So here we go.
I am pretty sure my cam is a standard v4l2 device.
Also based on the docs I realize that i have to be selective with the use of the camera.
USB cameras take a lot of bandwidth. A USB camera connected to a USB2 port or hub consumes virtually all the bandwidth that the port can handle
I wanted to have an internal facing camera but that seems like I might need to have something else running inside instead.
Test Run
The first time I started it I lost my connection and couldn’t get it to stop. I had to log in and kill the process.
After back in I was able to set up htop and tail the log file. I noticed that when it started it found the OS settings I had put in for my camera. It pulled in all the configs as I hoped.
[1:ml1] [NTC] [VID] [Jul 06 13:23:27] v4l2_scan_controls: “Gain”, default 0, current 0 [1:ml1] [NTC] [ALL] [Jul 06 13:23:27] image_ring_resize: Resizing pre_capture buffer to 1 items [1:ml1] [NTC] [STR] [Jul 06 13:23:27] http_bindsock: listening on 127.0.0.1 port 8081
I had to open up a port for this. I wasn’t sure what it was.
ufw allow 8081/tcp
Running As A Service
I’m going to start this up and run it live for now.
service motion start
The PIR Solution
Tutorials
https://randomnerdtutorials.com/arduino-with-pir-motion-sensor/
https://github.com/koenieee/WakeOnLan-ESP8266
Wake Controls
https://github.com/koenieee/WakeOnLan-ESP8266
https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/45738/arduino-esp8266-to-put-pc-to-sleep-and-wake-it-up
https://www.hackster.io/zvonko-bockaj/wemos-esp8266-remote-pc-switch-062c7a
Network Tools
I thought about just using wifi to send the wake on LAN signal. That seems risky as I don’t want to relay on both being connected. I could also use bluetooth and serial. But I don’t trust bluetooth on my device with the current ubuntu version.
I’m also trying to not use a ton of power. If the arduino is always connected then it’s eating up power. A signal from serial isn’t anything more than what was already going through the USB.
Something like this could bolt on but an extra $45 isn’t worth it to me.
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-uno-wifi-rev2
Keystrokes for Different Folks
What I tried near the end of my searching for wake specific commands I figured it would be okay to emulate a keyboard. Obviously this is not ideal but it seems like a fun thing to at least try.
Keyboard.h reference https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/language/functions/usb/keyboard/
Bah.
Looks like Arduino Uno is a slave USB only and I would have to have a USB host shield for it.