Guillotine - using Raspberry Pi 3, motion, ffmpeg, sshfs, and autofs to capture motion video events to an offsite server.

Prerequisites:
Raspberry Pi 3
Raspberry Pi Camera Module

• Download Raspbian Jessie Lite and install it on an SD card (e.g. OS X example commands shown below)
  • #unmount disk before writing to it with dd. /dev/disk2 merely an example here (use your SD card device file)
  • diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
  • #replace /dev/disk2 with the device file of your SD card
  • sudo dd bs=1 if=raspian_image.dmg of=/dev/disk2
• Boot raspbian and append this to the bottom of /boot/config.txt
  • gpu_mem=880
  • start_x=1
  • disable_camera_led=1
• Edit /etc/defaults/keyboard
  • XKBLAYOUT="us"
• (reboot to apply above changes)
• Connect pi to wifi
  • iwlist wlan0 scan
  • wpa_passphrase "your_ssid" "your_passphrase" > wifi_config
  • cat wifi_config >> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
  • wpa_cli reconfigure
  • #Check if wlan0 connects and acquires an address via DHCP
• Update and install git
  • apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
  • apt-get install git
• Install ffmpeg
  • Follow the instructions specified here -> https://www.jeffreythompson.org/blog/2014/11/13/installing-ffmpeg-for-raspberry-pi/ (summarized below)
    • Install H264 Support
      • cd /usr/src
      • sudo git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264
      • cd x264
      • sudo ./configure --host=arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi --enable-static --disable-opencl
      • sudo make
      • sudo make install
    • Compile and install ffmpeg
      • cd /usr/src
      • sudo git clone https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg.git
      • cd ffmpeg
      • sudo ./configure --arch=armel --target-os=linux --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree
      • sudo make
      • sudo make install
• Install motion
  • wget https://github.com/Motion-Project/motion/releases/download/release-4.0.1/pi_jessie_motion_4.0.1-1_armhf.deb
  • sudo dpkg -i pi_jessie_motion_4.0.1-1_armhf.deb
  • sudo apt-get -f install #install missing dependencies for motion
• Configure Motion (optimized motion config for raspberry pi)
  • #this patch file sets the motion target_dir to /opt/Video/ir
  • sudo patch < motion.patch
• Copy ssh config file and generate/copy your private ssh key to /root/.ssh/id_rsa (remember to chmod 0400)
  • Connect to the video server to add your ssh public key (id_rsa.pub) to your user's authorized_users file (e.g. /home/your_user/.ssh/authorized_users)
• Enable sshfs & autofs
  • sudo apt-get install sshfs autofs
  • sudo mkdir -p /opt/Video/noir
  • #copy auto.master & auto.sshfs to /etc (ensure neither are executable (chmod 0600).
  • #The auto.sshfs file uses this bit at the end of the line to configure the remote sshfs mount: "sshfs#User@your_server_fqdn:/home/User/Video/evidence/ir"
  • #Be sure to create the remote dir on the target server, owned by the sshfs user, with appropriate permissions (I used mode 777 because more restrictive perms weren't playing nice with sshfs)
  • sudo systemctl restart autofs
  • #check mount point is working as intended (can you see the contents of the sshfs mount in /opt/Video ?)
• Enable motion auto-start systemd service
  • #copy start_motion.service to /etc/systemd/system
  • sudo systemctl enable start_motion.service
  • (start raspivid -p -f once if you get this error (mmal_vc_component_enable failed to enable component ENOSPC)

Motion should have been capturing motion video events to your offsite server since you restarted autofs to apply its config. At this point if something isn't working, you should probably check if motion is running without errors. Can you see video output with raspivid? Is your autofs working with your sshfs mount? Can you touch files in your sshfs mount? Do some basic troubleshooting and post an issue if you get stuck - Cheers!

I have a cleanup script for my offsite server which keeps a GCP disk slam full of video mkv files. (I found the mkv codec to be the most efficient for this purpose on the pi 3.)

Optional Steps:

• Setup SSH Server:
  • sudo raspi-config
    • select "Interfacing Options"
    • Navigate to SSH and enable
    • (headless activation)
    • sudo touch /boot/ssh
• Review timezone config
  • sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
• Adjust mmalcam_control_params options such as -hf and -vf if the picam picture needs tweaking
• Adjust motion framerate and threshold config values (to increase/decrease frames captured per second, and the motion threshold value [the motion config file can be found at /etc/motion/motion.conf])