A long time ago, I bought a foscam camera with the intention of using it to detect motion in my home when I was not there. The UI for the foscam camera made this a breeze, and after spending a few minutes putting it in the location I wanted, it has worked like a charm. The foscam cameras have a small flaw (they detect “motion” when the light changes significantly – like at sunrise), but this is something that doesn’t bother me. I have it setup facing the door, so I get an email whenever the door opens, along with a picture of the person opening the door
1.
Of course, this is less than ideal, as I get a picture of myself whenever I come home, until I can turn off the cameras. I often found myself worrying about turning off the cameras when I got home – rushing to a computer, going to the webpage for the camera, logging in, and then clicking the appropriate checkbox to turn it off. Not a big deal, but definitely an annoyance, as it desensitized me to receiving emails from the camera and it cluttered up my mailbox with pictures I didn’t want (or need). And, even worse, I’d often forget to “arm” the cameras when I left, as the hassle of getting pictures when I was walking out often prevented me from doing it.
So, I wanted to find a way where I could (from the safety of my driveway) turn off the camera when I got home, and turn it on when I left
2. I’d played with ideas on how to do this for a while, and only recently did I come up with what seems like a good solution – to have a webpage that I could access on my phone with 2 buttons – on and off. For security reasons, I wanted to make this webpage available only if I was on my local network, which just means that my phone has to be attached to my wifi to make this work
3.
The first step to making this work was to find a way to interface with the camera that I could use to turn it on and off. After some googling, I was able to find a document which gave me instructions on what api was available for the camera
4. I used the document to figure out how to turn on and off the motion detection, and wrote a quick bash script to do it. I debugged it (and tested it) on my raspberrypi. The script looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
# Proper header for a Bash script.
curl -s "http://<ip>/set_alarm.cgi?user=admin&pwd=<pwd>&motion_armed=$1&motion_compensation=1"
Now, I needed to find a way to create and serve the webpage. Although I’m not a great python developer, I’ve found that python is an incredible tool to do things like this. Python even comes with a way to spin up a webserver built in
5.
This does a few things, but it doesn’t wrap the functionality up that I want – I want to be able to execute my script, pass it args, and receive the results. To accomplish this, I figured I’d have to write a little code to execute the script, and send the results back to the “page” asking for it. This turned out to be easier than even I could expect. Here’s the final python code:
import os
import sys
import BaseHTTPServer
import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
import urlparse
import json
import subprocess
from optparse import OptionParser
class HttpHandler(SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):
def do_GET(self):
# Parse query data & params to find out what was passed
parsedParams = urlparse.urlparse(self.path)
queryParsed = urlparse.parse_qs(parsedParams.query)
if not hostname.startswith("192.168.") :
self.send_response(401, 'request not allowed')
return
# request is either for a file to be served up or the results to our query
if parsedParams.path == "/bash":
try:
self.processBashRequest(queryParsed)
except Exception, e:
self.send_error(404,'bash failed!' % self.path)
else:
SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)
def processBashRequest(self, query):
script = query['script']
if 'args' in query :
script = script + query['args']
output = subprocess.Popen(script, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
lines = output.stdout.readlines()
results = {}
data = []
for line in lines:
line = line.strip()
data.append(line)
results['output'] = data
#send response code:
self.send_response(200)
#send headers:
self.send_header("Content-type:", "text/html")
#end headers:
self.end_headers()
#data:
json.dump(results, self.wfile)
#data:
self.wfile.close()
class ThreadingSimpleServer(SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn, BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer):
pass
if __name__ == "__main__":
parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option("-p", "--port", dest="port",
help="which port to use")
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()
http_port = 8000
if options.port is not None:
http_port = int(options.port)
SocketServer.TCPServer.allow_reuse_address = True
httpd = ThreadingSimpleServer(("", http_port), HttpHandler)
print "serving at port %d" % http_port
sys.stdout.flush()
httpd.serve_forever()
On every request, it checks to make sure that the ip which sent the request in on my network (just in case), and if it is not, responds with a not authorized error. Once it receives the request, it serves the page, unless it’s a special request called bash. The special request bash runs the specified bash script on the local machine and then returns the results in json. This allows us to setup a webpage which then calls a bash script on the local machine. I’m slowly learning the jquery syntax, so the page below may not be perfect, but I think this gives you and idea of what is possible.
<!doctype html>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0;">
<html>
<head>
<title>Camera On/Off controller</title>
</head>
<style type="text/css">
.busy * {
cursor: wait !important;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery.ajaxSetup({
beforeSend: function() {
$('html').addClass('busy');
},
complete: function() {
$('html').removeClass('busy');
}
});
$(document).ready(
function()
{
//start document ready
$("#on-button").click(
function (e)
{
e.preventDefault();
query = "bash?script=/scripts/flip-cameras.sh&args=1";
$.ajax(
{url: query,
dataType: 'json',
success:
function(data){
}
});
}
);
$("#off-button").click(
function (e)
{
e.preventDefault();
query = "bash?script=/scripts/flip-cameras.sh&args=0";
$.ajax(
{url: query,
dataType: 'json',
success:
function(data){
}
});
}
);
});//end document ready
</script>
<body>
<form id="on-form">
<div>
<button type="button" id="on-button">On</button>
</div>
</form>
<form id="off-form">
<div>
<button type="button" id="off-button">Off</button>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
And now, when I’m in my driveway, I can turn on and off the camera easily. The idea with this would be to automate more of the stuff I have in my house (like lights being turned on, etc) when I’m in my driveway, in the warmth of my car, but I’ve not yet put together the scripts to turn on and off zwave lights yet (nor have I installed them).
1. This does not replace the security of a “real” security system, as this does not trigger a call to the appropriate authorities, but it does give me a peace of mind when we are away for extended periods.
2. At least, if I remember.
3. Not an issue for me, as my wifi reaches my driveway.
4. See http://www.foscam.es/descarga/ipcam_cgi_sdk.pdf
5. See https://docs.python.org/2/library/simplehttpserver.html
Stuff I'm trying at home 