The Raspberry Pi doc provides a recipe for the simplest possible time-lapse webcam: fire fswebcam once a minute from a cron job.
The crontab entry looks much like their example:
* * * * * /home/ed/bin/grabimg.sh 2>&1
I put all the camera details in the ~/.config/fswebcam.conf config file:
# Logitech C130 / C510 camera device v4l2:/dev/video0 input 0 resolution 1280x720 set sharpness=128 jpeg 95 set "power line frequency"="60 hz" #no-banner
That simplifies the ~/bin/grabimg.sh script:
#!/bin/bash DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S") fswebcam -c /home/ed/.config/fswebcam.conf /mnt/samba/webcam/$DATE.jpg
The output directory lives on a Samba-shared USB stick jammed in the back of the Asus router, so I need not putz with a Samba server on the RPi.
Manually mounting the share, which for the moment is the /testfolder/webcam directory on the USB stick:
sudo mount -t cifs -o user=ed //gateway/testfolder/webcam /mnt/samba
I’m pretty sure automagically mounting the share will require the same workarounds as on my desktop box, but this fstab entry is a start:
#-- ASUS router Samba share //gateway/testfolder/webcam /mnt/samba cifs auto,uid=ed,credentials=/root/.gateway-id 0 0
That requires a corresponding credentials file with all the secret info:
domain=WHATSMYNET username=ed password=pick-your-own
This is mostly a test to see how long it takes before something on the RPi goes toes-up enough to require a manual reboot. Disabling the WiFi link’s power saving mode seems to keep the RPi on the air all the time, which is a start.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 