tomcasavant/gifcam

Code for Pix-E LoFi Gif Camera

Gifcam Revised

Example at @[email protected]

Changes

• Replaces Twitter (twython) with Mastodon (Mastodon.py)
• Web App to allow config changes, and a way to view all generated gifs
• Picamera2 support (supports updated camera modules)
• (temporarily) removed status led because I stupidly forgot to add it to my camera
• Config file
• WIP: BeReal Integration (wating on this)

TODO

• Gallery currently uses /static/gifs/* but gifs are saved to /gifs/
• Add config varaible for base directory (I'm using /home/tom/ but most people will be using /home/pi)
• Updated documentation (picamera2 cannot be installed in a virtual environment, requires libcamera)
• Fix mastodon integration to wait til file is uploaded (right now it just waits 30 seconds and assumes the gif was updated by that point)

Potential Future Changes

• Improved Gallery view
• Security/passwords on web app
• Pixelfed Support (Probably already works with Mastodon.py but untested) also pixelfed Story support
• Timelapse Mode
• Security Camera Mode (with homeassistant support?)
• Disapprove/Approve Mode for posts (e.g. wait for approval on gif before posting to mastodon)
• Threading to allow taking photos while posting to mastodon simultaneously
• Enable/Disable gifcam mode from web ui
• Improve preview (right now it saves/transcodes videos to an mp4 and then you have to refresh to get most recent clip)

Web App:

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Features

• Creates a GIF at the press of a button and saves it locally
• Optionally tweet the created GIF
• The GIF can be made to run START => END or "rebound" START <=> END
• Status LEDs keep the user informed as to what's going on

How To Use the Camera

• Power on the camera.
• The button will illuminate when the camera is ready to make a GIF.
• When you press the button, the button LED will strobe to indicate that the camera is recording.
• When recording finishes, the button LED will switch off.
• The status LED will blink while the GIF is being processed (and optionally, tweeted)
• When processing is finished, the camera will return to the READY state, and the button LED will illuminate.

Change Camera Behaviour

The behaviour of the camera is controlled by a few Behaviour Variables. These are in gifcam.py. With these variables you can change the frame-number and time duration of gifs, and control tweeting behaviour.

• tweet = True/False Enables or Disables an automatic tweet of the captured gif. This significantly increases the time needed in between GIF captures.
• num_frame Sets the number of frames in the gif
• gif_delay Sets the number of milliseconds a frame is displayed in the gif.
• rebound = True/False Create a gif that loops start <=> end

For now these variables are programmed into the script, but it would be trivial to connect extra switches to your Pi that control these variables. Perhaps a rotary switch to select frame number, and sliding switches to control rebound and tweet behaviour.

3D Printer Files:

• Download Here - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1761082

Minimum Requirements:

• PiCamera -- http://picamera.readthedocs.org/
• Gitcore
• GraphicsMagick -- http://www.graphicsmagick.org/
• (Optional) twython -- https://github.com/ryanmcgrath/twython

Basic Setup (if you already have a working Pi):

Detailed steps on how to get your Pi Zero W up and running without a keyboard, monitor or mouse are covered at the bottom of this text, in the In-Depth Instructions Here I'm assuming we're starting with a clean install of Raspbian Jessie Lite. If you're running the full version of Raspbian instead, several of these steps will be redundant - it won't hurt to execute each install command though, you'll just be notified that you already have a given software package.

Install Dependencies

• Run -- sudo apt-get update
• Run -- sudo apt-get upgrade
• Install dependencies (mastodon) -- pip install -r requirements.txt
• Make sure camera interface is enabled with sudo raspi-config > Interfacing Options > Camera
• Install GraphicsMagick -- sudo apt-get install graphicsmagick
• Install Gitcore -- sudo apt-get install git-core (optional, probably already installed)
• Install GifCam -- git clone https://github.com/TomCasavant/gifcam
• Install pip: sudo apt-get install python-pip (optional, probably already installed)
• Install PiCamera -- pip install picamera[array]
• Install dependencies (mastodon) -- pip install -r requirements.txt
• Copy the config.toml.example file -- cp config.toml.example config.toml and enable services you want
• Optional; Install mount USB if you want to use the gifcamusb.py script instead (good for Pis without wifi. http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/05/how-to-mount-a-usb-flash-disk-on-the-raspberry-pi/
• To access your GIFs over WiFi, configure the gif directory as a samba shared directory

Run the gifcam at boot:

• Run -- crontab -e
  • You may be prompted to select a text editor if you haven't edited the crontab before. You'll be prompted for a selection between 1 and 3. I choose nano, which is 2 - this is also the default choice, indicated by the [2] .
• add this line to end of that file - @reboot sh /home/pi/gifcam/launcher.sh

Permissions:

• If hitting "permission denied" run - sudo chown -R pi /home/pi/gifcam/

Optional: Setup a Samba shared directory to access your GIFs over WiFi

• Install samba: sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
• Create a backup of the default samba configuration: sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf_$(date +%F) This will create a copy, with today's date on the extension.
• Set the gif directory as a shared directory: sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the following chunk:

[gifs]
  comment = GIF share
  path = /home/pi/gifcam/gifs
  browseable = yes
  read only = no

• Create samba users: execute sudo smbpasswd -a pi and enter your desired password. Whether you choose to keep this as the default (unsecure) is up to you. This will be the username and password required to access the shared folder.
• Restart your samba service with sudo /etc/init.d/smbd stop then sudo /etc/init.d/smbd start (or just reboot with sudo reboot)
• You can should now be able to access your networked drive. On Windows, enter \gifcam into your explorer address bar and you should be prompted for the samba username and password you created earlier.

In-Depth instructions (Pi Zero W from first boot. These instructions will work for other models except for USB OTG steps)

Complete the following steps on your computer. We will be creating and modifying files in the small "BOOT" partition of the SD card. On Windows, this is the drive that appears when you plug in your SD card.

• Flash SD card with Jessie Lite
• Open the SD card in your File Explorer.
• Setup USB OTG network access. This will allow you to always SSH into the Pi via a direct connection through USB - useful if you have problems with WiFi at any point.
  • Open the file config.txt and add to the bottom dtoverlay=dwc2 on a new line, then save the file.
  • Open cmdline.txt. Very careful with the syntax in this file: Each parameter is seperated by a single space (it does not use newlines). Insert modules-load=dwc2,g_ether after rootwait. Make sure there is a single space before and after this piece of text.
• Setup WiFi access for first boot:
  • Create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf in the boot parition.
  • Paste the following text into the file, filling in your own WiFi SSID (network name) and password.

    network={
      ssid="SSID"
      psk="password"
      key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    }
    

  • You can follow this process at any time to overwrite the WiFi credentials if you have to.
• Enable SSH: create an empty file called ssh in the boot partition. Make sure there is no file extension.
• Power the Pi and open an SSH session. If you're accessing over wifi, SSH to pi@raspberrypi. If you're accessing over USB OTG, SSH to [email protected]
• On first boot give the Pi a meaningful hostname, like gifcam. This will avoid hostname conflicts on your network if you deploy another Raspberry Pi.
• Now follow the Basic Setup instructions

ToDo:

• working directory referencing, this is so you can cleanup source images with: rm $workingDir/\*.jpg rather than from within the repo main directory
• samba shared folder to pull images off over wifi (Pi Zero W)
• smart twitter handling for when gifs are taken and you're not on wifi? If an image upload fails it gets pushed onto a re-attempt stack, which attempts to pop each time a gif is taken / an upload button pressed!