#Raspberry Pi Timelapse project

Someone gave me a "Magic Garden" as a present this Christmas! So I headed to my local dealer to get me a Pi Cam to play around with it as I now really really had a valuable yet scientific job to do!

Here's the result:

And this is what I've done:

I cut a little slot into the pi case for the flat cable. Then I found some parts of a lamp and a lighter and a film canister - screwed and glued it together to have a solid and flexible stand for it. While writing these lines I am thinking abount some buttons to start my scripts and shutdown the device ...

Next thing was to follow this tutorial to get that thing working: python-picamera-setup

As the pi runs headless through its life, I wanted it to either copy the pictures to a dropbox folder or to a usb stick plugged into the pi. 

For the dropbox part I followed raspi.tv here: how-to-use-dropbox-with-raspberry-pi

Some googling helped me to find out how to mount a usb stick to my pi how-to-mount-a-usb-flash-disk-on-the-raspberry-pi Most important was to change the fstab: adding the sticks uuid and so on:

Using the above mentioned tutorials I came out with two little python scripts:
(note to myself: needs some errorhandling if the dropbox upload fails)


-----------------tinkerCam.py-----------------
#! /usr/bin/env python
# taking a picture and uploading it to dropbox
# uses Andrea Fabrizis Dropbox Upload www.andreafabrizi.it

from subprocess import call
import time
import datetime
import picamera


pictureDir = '/home/pi/tinkerCam/pictures/'
ts = time.time()
fileNameShort = 'tinkerPic_' + datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).strftime('%d-%m-%y_%H-%M-%S') + '.jpg'

uploader = '/home/pi/Dropbox-Uploader/dropbox_uploader.sh'
upconfig = '/home/pi/Dropbox-Uploader/.dropbox_uploader'

camera = picamera.PiCamera()
fileName = pictureDir + fileNameShort

camera.capture(fileName)

cmd = uploader + ' -f ' + upconfig + ' upload ' + fileName + ' /tinkerCam/' + fileNameShort
call([cmd], shell = True)

#copy file to usbStick
stickDir = '/media/stick/tinkerCam/'
cmd = 'mv ' + fileName + ' ' + stickDir+fileNameShort
print cmd
#call([cmd], shell = True)

#clean up
cmd='rm ' + fileName
call([cmd], shell = True)
print 'finished' 

-----------------tinkerTimelapse.py-----------------

#! /usr/bin/env python

from subprocess import call

import time

import datetime

import picamera

uploader = '/home/pi/Dropbox-Uploader/dropbox_uploader.sh'

upconfig = '/home/pi/Dropbox-Uploader/.dropbox_uploader'

usbPath = '/media/stick/tinkerTimelapse/'

dropboxPath = '/tinkerCamTimelapse/'

tempPath = '/home/pi/tinkerCam/'

def toDropbox(fileNameShort):

cmd = uploader + ' -f ' + upconfig + ' upload ' + tempPath + fileNameShort + ' ' + dropboxPath + fileNameShort

call([cmd], shell = True)

#clean up

cmd = 'rm ' + tempPath + fileNameShort

call([cmd], shell = True)

def capturePic(frame, fileNameShort):

with picamera.PiCamera() as cam:

time.sleep(2)

picPath = tempPath + fileNameShort

print 'capturePic:', picPath

cam.capture(picPath)

def constructFileName():

ts = time.time()

fileNameShort = 'tinkerPic_' + datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).strftime('%d-%m-%y_%H-%M-%S') + '.jpg'

return fileNameShort

#user interface

picDays = raw_input('How many days will be captured?: ')

framesPerHour = raw_input('How many pictures per hour?: ')

frames = int(framesPerHour) * 24 * int(picDays)

saveTo = raw_input('Save to? [dropbox, usb]: ')

#capture images

for frame in range(frames):

start = time.time()

fileNameShort = constructFileName()

fileName = tempPath + fileNameShort

capturePic(frame, fileNameShort)

if saveTo == 'dropbox' or saveTo == 'd':

toDropbox(fileNameShort)

if saveTo == 'usb' or saveTo == 'u':

cmd = 'mv ' + tempPath + fileNameShort + ' ' + usbPath + fileNameShort

call([cmd], shell = True)

print 'Picture taken: ', frame

time.sleep(int(60 * 60 / int(framesPerHour)) - (time.time() - start))

print 'finished'