Using a USB webcam with Vera

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21

How do I configure motion or mjpg_streamer so it’s supported by Vera?

In motion I have used the /lastsnap.jpg but it seems to not be supported, except when in the phase where you configure the standard ip camera in Vera. After that vera don’t seem to recognize any video stream.
Any hints would be very useful…

22

@HouseBot, are you able to see the stream correctly in your web browser? I have not had much luck with motion’s mjpg stream on Vera, just static images. I think mjpg_streamer worked for me.

I actually have a slightly more confusing setup, I run zoneminder on a virtual machine and that monitors my mjpg_streamer cameras. I then point Vera at zoneminder. I’ll try to do a test were I have Vera stream directly from mjpg_streamer and see what settings work, but it might be a few days. I’m redoing quite a bit of my home network so they are all currently offline.

23

Maybe definition question if last snap is really a stream or not. But I don’t know which of the outputs from motion that is supported.
But there seems to be some development still needed on the raspberry pie or the drivers since as soon as I bump up the quality it crashes. I know there is several supported USB cameras but unfortunately, for me, I did not have any of them around.

24

@HouseBot, lastsnap.jpg is not a stream. It is just a still frame capture. Does that help?

25

@radarengineer, but how to configure motion so it produces the correct stream for vera?

26

I installed the webcam v4l-conf that reliable works on the Raspberry Pi with my cameras. ;D
And now I also got it successfully added to Vera 8)
The final step was to add the this to the URL field webcam.jpg?Quality=Standard on the Panasonic IP camera plug in. I have not tested the general IP camera plug in yet.

27

Does anyone have a howto on getting a usb camera working on a vera lite?

I have a couple laying around I would like to put into use without having to waste the electricity of turning on another computer.

I think this would be a nice additional selling point for the vera if it were to be enabled by default in the software. An inexpensive webcam will additionally turn your vera into a motion sensing ipcam.

rearden

28

I’m not sure if Vera can power a USB cam or if there is drivers around. Would be nice if it worked. Rasp Pi required a powered USB hub to do it.

29

@rearden, Using a webcam off the vera directly is probably a bad idea, I’m not sure Vera has enough spare cycles available. For some reason people really hate the idea of using a separate device / computer but it makes configuration a lot easier and you don’t have to worry about slowing down / breaking your Vera.

The Pogoplus classics I use to run my webcams draw 4 watts of power. This weekend they were selling for $13 shipped from buy.com. They are regularly selling for less than $20 with shipping. Raspberry Pis should also work well.

30

radar, do you have a guide somewhere on how to install mjpg_streamer on the pogoplug?

I have the same setup: Pogoplug v2, installed with ArchLinux. I’d like to use it as a dog webcam, but using a Logitech C310, I have’t had any luck with it.

I’m not used to Linux, so I just managed to install Linux by following the detail guides. But all the google results I’ve been able to find about mjpg_streamer seems to assume you know what what you’re doing.

I have mjpg_streamer installed, and depending on the run command it runs, but I don’t know where it’s putting the images. I’m not even sure if mjpg_streamer simply puts the image into a user specified directory, or if it has a webserver built in that allow you to serve the image too?

I’ve tried starting the program several ways…I forget which method at least turns on the LED on the webcam.

/usr/bin/mjpg_streamer -i "input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -f 1 -r 960x720"\ -o "output_http.so -p 80 -w /mnt/back1/webstreamer"\ -b
/usr/bin/mjpg_streamer -i "input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -y" -o "output_http.so -p 8080 -w /mnt/back1/webstreamer"

The /mnt/back1/webstreamer folder is a folder on a USB drive where I want it to put the images, although I’d much rather webstreame put the images in RAM rather than the flash drive, I just don’t know how to do that.

Thanks for any hints!

31

@coachclass, somehow I missed your post! Lets see if we can get you running. You are pretty close with your command, but you don’t need to save files anywhere to stream video. I would try this:

/usr/bin/mjpg_streamer -i "input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -r 960x720 -f 2" -o "output_http.so -p 80"

You will have to run as root if you want to stream from port 80. Ports 0-1024 are restricted to root on most operating systems.

I run mjpeg_streamer as a service. To do this I wrote the following to ‘/etc/systemd/system/webcam1.service’:

[code][Unit]
Description=mjpeg_streamer webcam one
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mjpg_streamer -i “input_uvc.so -d /dev/video0 -r 320x240 -f 2” -o “output_http.so -p 8080” | /dev/null

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target[/code]

If you want this to run when you boot the Pogoplug create the above file (tweak as needed) and run ‘systemctl enable webcam1’ as root (or with sudo).

If that doesn’t work for you let me know and we can work from there.

32

I just got a Raspberry Pi and I picked up a cheap Logitech webcam too to try this out on. I also have the same Pogoplug as radarengineer that I can use too if I need. I haven’t gotten it all working yet, but I haven’t put much time into it yet.

My question is, with motion, can it be set up as a motion detector in UI5 like I can do with my Foscam? Or will it just be a camera only?

33

[quote=“Rusty2192, post:32, topic:170196”]I just got a Raspberry Pi and I picked up a cheap Logitech webcam too to try this out on. I also have the same Pogoplug as radarengineer that I can use too if I need. I haven’t gotten it all working yet, but I haven’t put much time into it yet.

My question is, with motion, can it be set up as a motion detector in UI5 like I can do with my Foscam? Or will it just be a camera only?[/quote]
I think that part is only supported with the Foscam plugin. But you could elaborate with motion:
[url=http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/347]Wayback Machine