I can't take credit for it, but someone ported the real GNU wget utility to Android. I found this many months ago and have kept it on my phone. The wget that came with busybox worked great for a while, but after my upgrade to Cyanogen 7 a couple of weeks ago, I noticed several of my Tasker tasks were failing. I finally figured out that it was due to the busybox wget located in /system/xbin/wget. I deleted it and dropped this into /system/bin and everything started working again.
I uploaded it here in case anyone wants it (and so I don't lose it myself.)
Thanks to whoever originally compiled it for Android!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
ssh hiccupped
I will never understand some things.
Last night, I sat down to watch a movie and dimmed the lights using ssh on my phone (using a Zoom widget to run the ssh command to my PC and trigger heyu controlling home automation, it's all here on the blog somewhere). After the movie, I went to brighten the lights and found that it didn't work. After much investigation, I found that ssh was failing to connect to my PC. No matter what I tried, ssh failed with this error:
no address associated with hostname
I recently installed an app which created network sockets in order to watch network traffic, so I thought maybe that screwed something up. I had no idea how to fix it, and it was time for an update anyway, so I wiped the phone and installed the latest Cyanogenmod today (7RC2). After getting everything installed and set up, I dropped to a terminal and tried to ssh in to the PC and got:
no address associated with hostname
What the..? Ping and everything else worked, so it didn't seem to be a DNS issue. Maybe Google shipped out an Android OTA update that changed the network stack somehow?
I finally found a fix by adding my PC's IP address to /etc/hosts and giving it a name:
xx.xxx.xx.xx home
Then ssh user@home worked! I keep the home IP address stored in a file so it was easy to change all of my ssh commands by changing the ip address in that file to "home", and it's worked all day with no problems.
Later tonight, I was trying to set up a new connection and accidentally typed ssh user@xx.xxx.xx.xx and, after changing absolutely nothing, it works again!
Well, the two lessons for today are that if ssh gives you that error, try hardcoding the ip address in /etc/hosts and connecting to it's hostname instead of the ip directly and when it comes to computing, just accept the fact that sometimes, things will make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Last night, I sat down to watch a movie and dimmed the lights using ssh on my phone (using a Zoom widget to run the ssh command to my PC and trigger heyu controlling home automation, it's all here on the blog somewhere). After the movie, I went to brighten the lights and found that it didn't work. After much investigation, I found that ssh was failing to connect to my PC. No matter what I tried, ssh failed with this error:
no address associated with hostname
I recently installed an app which created network sockets in order to watch network traffic, so I thought maybe that screwed something up. I had no idea how to fix it, and it was time for an update anyway, so I wiped the phone and installed the latest Cyanogenmod today (7RC2). After getting everything installed and set up, I dropped to a terminal and tried to ssh in to the PC and got:
no address associated with hostname
What the..? Ping and everything else worked, so it didn't seem to be a DNS issue. Maybe Google shipped out an Android OTA update that changed the network stack somehow?
I finally found a fix by adding my PC's IP address to /etc/hosts and giving it a name:
xx.xxx.xx.xx home
Then ssh user@home worked! I keep the home IP address stored in a file so it was easy to change all of my ssh commands by changing the ip address in that file to "home", and it's worked all day with no problems.
Later tonight, I was trying to set up a new connection and accidentally typed ssh user@xx.xxx.xx.xx and, after changing absolutely nothing, it works again!
Well, the two lessons for today are that if ssh gives you that error, try hardcoding the ip address in /etc/hosts and connecting to it's hostname instead of the ip directly and when it comes to computing, just accept the fact that sometimes, things will make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
RemoteDroid
RemoteDroid is a great little app that turns your Android phone into a mouse/keyboard to use with your computer. I mainly use it as a remote control for mplayer because mplayer uses keyboard shortcuts (which can be customized by editing ~/.mplayer/input.conf). I use the command line version, the GUI version is probably the same, but I've never used it so I can't say for sure.
The two work perfectly together. I can lay in bed and watch a movie on the computer at my desk and control it with my phone by tapping the keyboard in RemoteDroid. The only downside is that the server needed on the computer automatically opens a small screen. If you want to start the RemoteDroid server at boot, you have to live with that screen always being open. But there is a solution with KDE.
I'm sure something similar can be done with Gnome, but I've been using KDE for 10 years so I'm pretty much stuck with it and will probably still be using it when I'm an old ornery, cantankerous man (as opposed to the young ornery, cantankerous man I am today).
With KDE, When the RemoteDroid window comes up, right click on it and click "Configure Window Bahavior". This will bring up the KDE configuration utility.
Click Window Specific, then click "new" and click "Detect Window Properties". Your cursor will change to a crosshair. Click on the RemoteDroid window and it should automatically fill out the information for the RemoteDroid window.
Now go to the Geometry tab and click "minimized" then select the Preferences tab and select "Skip taskbar". Now when the window opens, it will be effectively invisible. It will be minimized so you won't see it on the screen, and it will not appear in the taskbar so there's no way for it to become unminimized.
Now, to run RemoteDroid when KDE starts, open a terminal and go to your kde autostart folder:
cd ~/.kde/Autostart
make a new script named startRemoteDroid.sh (or whatever you want to call it):
touch startRemoteDroid.sh
put this in the script, changing /PATH/TO to the path where RemoteDroid is on your system:
#! /bin/sh
java -jar /PATH/TO/RemoteDroidServer/RemoteDroidServer.jar &
make it executable:
chmod 755 startRemoteDroid.sh
and you're done. RemoteDroid will automatically start when KDE starts, and it will be invisible.
The two work perfectly together. I can lay in bed and watch a movie on the computer at my desk and control it with my phone by tapping the keyboard in RemoteDroid. The only downside is that the server needed on the computer automatically opens a small screen. If you want to start the RemoteDroid server at boot, you have to live with that screen always being open. But there is a solution with KDE.
I'm sure something similar can be done with Gnome, but I've been using KDE for 10 years so I'm pretty much stuck with it and will probably still be using it when I'm an old ornery, cantankerous man (as opposed to the young ornery, cantankerous man I am today).
With KDE, When the RemoteDroid window comes up, right click on it and click "Configure Window Bahavior". This will bring up the KDE configuration utility.
Click Window Specific, then click "new" and click "Detect Window Properties". Your cursor will change to a crosshair. Click on the RemoteDroid window and it should automatically fill out the information for the RemoteDroid window.
Now go to the Geometry tab and click "minimized" then select the Preferences tab and select "Skip taskbar". Now when the window opens, it will be effectively invisible. It will be minimized so you won't see it on the screen, and it will not appear in the taskbar so there's no way for it to become unminimized.
Now, to run RemoteDroid when KDE starts, open a terminal and go to your kde autostart folder:
cd ~/.kde/Autostart
make a new script named startRemoteDroid.sh (or whatever you want to call it):
touch startRemoteDroid.sh
put this in the script, changing /PATH/TO to the path where RemoteDroid is on your system:
#! /bin/sh
java -jar /PATH/TO/RemoteDroidServer/RemoteDroidServer.jar &
make it executable:
chmod 755 startRemoteDroid.sh
and you're done. RemoteDroid will automatically start when KDE starts, and it will be invisible.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Dawn/Dusk scheduler for Linux
I wanted to run some different commands in the morning and at night in order to set some variables to be used in home automation and switch my new camera from night mode to daytime mode, so I made a little scheduler to run things at dawn and dusk. There are probably other ways to do this, but this is the first time I've tried and I figured out this simple solution and think I'll stick with it.
First, create two files named "dawn" and "dusk" and put any commands you want to run in those scripts. They can be blank for now, but go ahead and make them because our scheduler will be looking for them.
Secondly, we need it to get the sunrise/sunset times. I'll have to leave this one to the reader. There are various services that will calculate the precise times for your latitude/longitude, but in my case I just grabbed it from my local TV news station's weather page. Lucky for me, dumping the page with a console browser gives me the sunrise/sunset times for the entire week and grabbing the top two with this command:
Sunrise: 07:18
Sunset: 18:22
So, again, this part will depend on your source, but what you want to get is two lines containing the sunrise and sunset time.
Once you figure out the command to get the sunrise/sunset times, put it on the first line of a new script and add these two lines below it:
So, running this daily with cron will automatically update the sunrise and sunset times and tell the system to run the dawn/dusk files according to the sunrise/sunset times. You can just add commands to the dawn/dusk files at any time.
That's the idea anyway. This is just an example, you'll probably want to use the full path for the suntimes, dawn and dusk files.
First, create two files named "dawn" and "dusk" and put any commands you want to run in those scripts. They can be blank for now, but go ahead and make them because our scheduler will be looking for them.
Secondly, we need it to get the sunrise/sunset times. I'll have to leave this one to the reader. There are various services that will calculate the precise times for your latitude/longitude, but in my case I just grabbed it from my local TV news station's weather page. Lucky for me, dumping the page with a console browser gives me the sunrise/sunset times for the entire week and grabbing the top two with this command:
lynx -dump [site] | egrep -i -m 2 "sunset|sunrise" > suntimesresults in this output being put in the file named suntimes:
Sunrise: 07:18
Sunset: 18:22
So, again, this part will depend on your source, but what you want to get is two lines containing the sunrise and sunset time.
Once you figure out the command to get the sunrise/sunset times, put it on the first line of a new script and add these two lines below it:
at $(grep -i sunset suntimes | awk '{ print $2 }') < dawn
at $(grep -i sunrise suntimes | awk '{ print $2 }') < duskWhat that does is tell the at command to run the commands in the day or night file at the time in the second column of line containing "sunrise" or "sunset." The output from the first command is "at 07:18 < dawn" which tells the at scheduler to go run every command in the dawn file at 07:18. The second command is "at 18:22 run the dusk file"So, running this daily with cron will automatically update the sunrise and sunset times and tell the system to run the dawn/dusk files according to the sunrise/sunset times. You can just add commands to the dawn/dusk files at any time.
That's the idea anyway. This is just an example, you'll probably want to use the full path for the suntimes, dawn and dusk files.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Foscam shell script, etc
I've been having fun playing with the new camera and came up with a lot of changes to the script I posted a day or two ago. I'm going to post it here and edit it here as I make any changes or additions. I'll date the script and document any changes I make in italics between this text and the script.
I call the script "cam" and will use that name here.
Notes on this script: I worked out the brightness command (and renamed it "bright" to make it shorter). The SDK said brightness could be from 0 to 255, but nothing seems to work right when you set it to 125 or 200 or any other number that you'd naturally try. And when you are controlling the camera through the web interface, it only goes 0-16.
I figured if I took the number from the SDK and rounded it off to 256 and divided by 16, that would equal 16 and would correspond to the 0-16 in the web interface. Sure enough, setting brightness in increments of 16 would make the it change by 1 in the web interface and the changes actually looked right on the camera. So in the script I did away with 0 (who needs that?) and made 1=16, 2=32... until 16=255.
I set up my own day and night "profiles" and left them in the script in case anyone wants them. If not, they can be deleted by deleting everything from "day)" to the next ";;" and "night)" to the next ";;" and they can be changed as well.
For day, my settings are:
IR off
Outside mode
Contrast 4
Brightness 6
For night they are:
IR on
50hz mode
Contrast 6
Brightness 6
It waits two seconds between each command as this seems to be a little more reliable than pounding it with a flurry of settings changes.
I also added the ability to save a snapshot X seconds after performing a camera command. This is useful if you want to do something like pan the camera to a preset then take a snapshot.
"s" tells it to take the snapshot and the seconds argument will tell it how many seconds to wait. So cam s 5 go 3 will make the camera move the the number 3 preset position, wait 5 seconds, then take the snapshot.
This is a little backwards. Logically the "s 5" should be on the end of the command but I didn't want to get into parsing multiple arguments as it would require a more complicated rewrite of the script. Although it is long, it's very simple right now. So, to automatically take a snapshot when performing a command, the first two arguments have to be the "s" and the number of seconds to wait.
It's important to understand how the camera behaves when receiving commands in order to time the screenshot properly, and to do other things as well, but the screenshot is a good example.
When the camera receives a command, it replies with "ok" and carries it out. If it is panned all the way to the right and you tell it to pan all the way to the left, it says "ok" but then may take 10 seconds for it to pan after that ok is sent.
So let's imagine you run the script twice to tell it go to a preset position then tell it to take a snapshot:
cam go 3; cam snap
As soon as it gets the first command, it replies with "ok" and the command finishes and the second one is sent. You will most likely get a snapshot from the cam while it is in motion. The same applies for other commands, such as brightness and contrast. It takes a couple of seconds for the brightness to adjust and a brightness command followed by a snapshot command will probably give you a snapshot of the unchaged brightness level. So keep that in mind if you want to chain commands together or take a snapshot.
Another thing worth noting if using this script over the internet is the possible delay. This is especially true when sending commands over the mobile network, but applies to anything not sent over wifi. Let's walk through a command:
cam left; cam stop
This will start the camera moving left then tell it to stop. Over wifi, the camera only moves a hair before getting the stop command. But imagine sending this over a mobile network that takes two seconds for communications to reach the camera and phone. The camera doesn't get the command for two seconds, then it starts moving left and sends the reply. Two seconds later, the phone gets the "ok" and sends the stop command. The phone doesn't get that for another two seconds. The end result will be that the camera moves for 4 seconds then stops.
Again, this is something to keep in mind and if you find yourself performing intricate commands over slow connections frequently, it may be worth bouncing the commands off a computer on the home network instead of connecting to the camera directly. With ssh, you can send all the commands you want to your Linux box and have it send them to the camera locally (I should be an ssh spokesperson. The first part of this post shows an ssh example and links to some how-tos).
Take our previous example: cam left; cam stop
If you're on a slow connection, the camera could move a lot before getting the stop command. But if you send the entire command to the computer, it would wait until it got the entire command then send it to the camera and send you the output. The camera would barely move a hair. Using the computer could "standardize" your commands so that they would always take about the same amount of time to execute every time. Your connection wouldn't matter because the PC/cam connection over wifi is going to always be good.
Ok, enough random thoughts, here is the Foscam shell script. If using on Android, just replace "/bin/sh" with "/system/bin/sh".
Feb 22:
Added three new commands for controlling the LED, patrol speed and displaying all the camera settings that you can query on the camera.
The LED refers to the green light on the back of the camera which is for indicating the wifi state. My camera is mounted outside right now so I can't check what it does, but the options are 0, 1, or 2. 2 turns the led off. I believe 1 makes it flash when connected to wifi and 0 makes it stay on. I called the command "led".
The patrol speed must vary by models. It's not in the current SDK but it's in an older version and it says the values are 0-100. However, on my camera, 0 is super fast, normal seems to be 2 or 3, and anything over 5 or 6 is incredibly slow. I'm assuming the values for my camera are 0-6 or 0-10. I called this command "speed".
The "settings" command [nevermind, replaced Feb 23]
I plan to include a lot more commands into the script soon. There are some that I don't use and can't test right now (like ftp) but probably will soon, some I will never use and may not be able to test (like DDNS and scheduling), and there are many that I just don't think are useful. But I plan to put everything I can into the script sooner or later.
Feb 23: Some cool changes! The script can now chain together multiple actions in one command. For example:
cam go 3 bright 4 p 5 snap go 1 bright 7 ir on
That long sucker would tell the camera to go to preset 3, set brightness to 4, pause 5 seconds, take a snapshot, go to preset 1, turn brightness to 7 and turn infrared on.
Phwew, that's a doozy of an example, but it illustrates how it can perform a chain of commands. Any commands that are in the script can be used, but beware, there is no error checking yet so you better get the commands right. Commands that require and argument better have them or else this script might explode and burn down your house or something.
There are three other changes:
"setup" and "gsetup" commands. These replace the "settings" command I put in yesterday. It's actually the same line of code but a shorter name and two separate commands. setup will dump all the output from get_params.cgi, get_status.cgi, get_misc.cgi (over 200 lines on my camera) and gsetup can be used to filter it using grep. "cam gsetup ftp" will dump all the output then grep it for "ftp" so all you will see are the lines that contains "ftp".
pause, sleep, wait, p, s, w. Any of these six commands will pause the script for X seconds. "cam go 2 w 5 go 3" will go to preset 2, wait 5 seconds, then go to preset 3. Remember, the countdown starts as soon as the camera is contacted, so if it takes 10 seconds for the camera to pan from 2 to 3, set the wait accordingly. All of those 6 commands are the same. I figured not everyone mentally associates "sleep" for this and might be more comfortable using wait or pause, or just the letters.
I also semi-alphabetized the commands in the script and took out my example dawn and dusk commands as I doubt they were useful.
I call the script "cam" and will use that name here.
Notes on this script: I worked out the brightness command (and renamed it "bright" to make it shorter). The SDK said brightness could be from 0 to 255, but nothing seems to work right when you set it to 125 or 200 or any other number that you'd naturally try. And when you are controlling the camera through the web interface, it only goes 0-16.
I figured if I took the number from the SDK and rounded it off to 256 and divided by 16, that would equal 16 and would correspond to the 0-16 in the web interface. Sure enough, setting brightness in increments of 16 would make the it change by 1 in the web interface and the changes actually looked right on the camera. So in the script I did away with 0 (who needs that?) and made 1=16, 2=32... until 16=255.
I set up my own day and night "profiles" and left them in the script in case anyone wants them. If not, they can be deleted by deleting everything from "day)" to the next ";;" and "night)" to the next ";;" and they can be changed as well.
For day, my settings are:
IR off
Outside mode
Contrast 4
Brightness 6
For night they are:
IR on
50hz mode
Contrast 6
Brightness 6
It waits two seconds between each command as this seems to be a little more reliable than pounding it with a flurry of settings changes.
I also added the ability to save a snapshot X seconds after performing a camera command. This is useful if you want to do something like pan the camera to a preset then take a snapshot.
"s" tells it to take the snapshot and the seconds argument will tell it how many seconds to wait. So cam s 5 go 3 will make the camera move the the number 3 preset position, wait 5 seconds, then take the snapshot.
This is a little backwards. Logically the "s 5" should be on the end of the command but I didn't want to get into parsing multiple arguments as it would require a more complicated rewrite of the script. Although it is long, it's very simple right now. So, to automatically take a snapshot when performing a command, the first two arguments have to be the "s" and the number of seconds to wait.
It's important to understand how the camera behaves when receiving commands in order to time the screenshot properly, and to do other things as well, but the screenshot is a good example.
When the camera receives a command, it replies with "ok" and carries it out. If it is panned all the way to the right and you tell it to pan all the way to the left, it says "ok" but then may take 10 seconds for it to pan after that ok is sent.
So let's imagine you run the script twice to tell it go to a preset position then tell it to take a snapshot:
cam go 3; cam snap
As soon as it gets the first command, it replies with "ok" and the command finishes and the second one is sent. You will most likely get a snapshot from the cam while it is in motion. The same applies for other commands, such as brightness and contrast. It takes a couple of seconds for the brightness to adjust and a brightness command followed by a snapshot command will probably give you a snapshot of the unchaged brightness level. So keep that in mind if you want to chain commands together or take a snapshot.
Another thing worth noting if using this script over the internet is the possible delay. This is especially true when sending commands over the mobile network, but applies to anything not sent over wifi. Let's walk through a command:
cam left; cam stop
This will start the camera moving left then tell it to stop. Over wifi, the camera only moves a hair before getting the stop command. But imagine sending this over a mobile network that takes two seconds for communications to reach the camera and phone. The camera doesn't get the command for two seconds, then it starts moving left and sends the reply. Two seconds later, the phone gets the "ok" and sends the stop command. The phone doesn't get that for another two seconds. The end result will be that the camera moves for 4 seconds then stops.
Again, this is something to keep in mind and if you find yourself performing intricate commands over slow connections frequently, it may be worth bouncing the commands off a computer on the home network instead of connecting to the camera directly. With ssh, you can send all the commands you want to your Linux box and have it send them to the camera locally (I should be an ssh spokesperson. The first part of this post shows an ssh example and links to some how-tos).
Take our previous example: cam left; cam stop
If you're on a slow connection, the camera could move a lot before getting the stop command. But if you send the entire command to the computer, it would wait until it got the entire command then send it to the camera and send you the output. The camera would barely move a hair. Using the computer could "standardize" your commands so that they would always take about the same amount of time to execute every time. Your connection wouldn't matter because the PC/cam connection over wifi is going to always be good.
Ok, enough random thoughts, here is the Foscam shell script. If using on Android, just replace "/bin/sh" with "/system/bin/sh".
Feb 22:
Added three new commands for controlling the LED, patrol speed and displaying all the camera settings that you can query on the camera.
The LED refers to the green light on the back of the camera which is for indicating the wifi state. My camera is mounted outside right now so I can't check what it does, but the options are 0, 1, or 2. 2 turns the led off. I believe 1 makes it flash when connected to wifi and 0 makes it stay on. I called the command "led".
The patrol speed must vary by models. It's not in the current SDK but it's in an older version and it says the values are 0-100. However, on my camera, 0 is super fast, normal seems to be 2 or 3, and anything over 5 or 6 is incredibly slow. I'm assuming the values for my camera are 0-6 or 0-10. I called this command "speed".
The "settings" command [nevermind, replaced Feb 23]
I plan to include a lot more commands into the script soon. There are some that I don't use and can't test right now (like ftp) but probably will soon, some I will never use and may not be able to test (like DDNS and scheduling), and there are many that I just don't think are useful. But I plan to put everything I can into the script sooner or later.
Feb 23: Some cool changes! The script can now chain together multiple actions in one command. For example:
cam go 3 bright 4 p 5 snap go 1 bright 7 ir on
That long sucker would tell the camera to go to preset 3, set brightness to 4, pause 5 seconds, take a snapshot, go to preset 1, turn brightness to 7 and turn infrared on.
Phwew, that's a doozy of an example, but it illustrates how it can perform a chain of commands. Any commands that are in the script can be used, but beware, there is no error checking yet so you better get the commands right. Commands that require and argument better have them or else this script might explode and burn down your house or something.
There are three other changes:
"setup" and "gsetup" commands. These replace the "settings" command I put in yesterday. It's actually the same line of code but a shorter name and two separate commands. setup will dump all the output from get_params.cgi, get_status.cgi, get_misc.cgi (over 200 lines on my camera) and gsetup can be used to filter it using grep. "cam gsetup ftp" will dump all the output then grep it for "ftp" so all you will see are the lines that contains "ftp".
pause, sleep, wait, p, s, w. Any of these six commands will pause the script for X seconds. "cam go 2 w 5 go 3" will go to preset 2, wait 5 seconds, then go to preset 3. Remember, the countdown starts as soon as the camera is contacted, so if it takes 10 seconds for the camera to pan from 2 to 3, set the wait accordingly. All of those 6 commands are the same. I figured not everyone mentally associates "sleep" for this and might be more comfortable using wait or pause, or just the letters.
I also semi-alphabetized the commands in the script and took out my example dawn and dusk commands as I doubt they were useful.
#! /bin/sh
# If using on Android, replace "/bin/sh" with "/system/bin/sh"
# Feb 23
[ -z "$1" ] && exec $0 h
######## set these options! ########
####################################
# cam username
user=""
# cam password
pass=""
# cam address or ip, with or without port.
# e.g., xxx.xx.xx.xxx:80
ip=""
# location to save snapshot
snapfile=""
####################################
####################################
addy="http://${user}:${pass}@${ip}"
arg=$#
while [ "$arg" -ne "0" ]; do
case "$1" in
50)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=3&value=0"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
60)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=3&value=1"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
alarm)
[ $2 = off ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?motion_armed=0"
[ $2 = on ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?motion_armed=1"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
bright)
[ $2 = 1 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=16"
[ $2 = 2 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=32"
[ $2 = 3 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=48"
[ $2 = 4 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=64"
[ $2 = 5 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=80"
[ $2 = 6 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=96"
[ $2 = 7 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=112"
[ $2 = 8 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=128"
[ $2 = 9 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=144"
[ $2 = 10 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=160"
[ $2 = 11 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=176"
[ $2 = 12 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=192"
[ $2 = 13 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=208"
[ $2 = 14 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=224"
[ $2 = 15 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=240"
[ $2 = 16 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=255"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
center)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=25"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
contrast)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=2&value=$2"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
down)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=2"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
flip)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=5&value=1"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
go)
[ $2 = 1 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=31"
[ $2 = 2 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=33"
[ $2 = 3 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=35"
[ $2 = 4 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=37"
[ $2 = 5 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=39"
[ $2 = 6 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=41"
[ $2 = 7 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=43"
[ $2 = 8 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=45"
[ $2 = 9 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=47"
[ $2 = 10 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=49"
[ $2 = 11 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=51"
[ $2 = 12 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=53"
[ $2 = 13 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=55"
[ $2 = 14 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=57"
[ $2 = 15 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=59"
[ $2 = 16 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=61"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
horiz)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=28"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
interval)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?mail=${2}"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
ir)
[ $2 = on ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=95"
[ $2 = off ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=94"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
led)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_misc.cgi?led_mode=$2"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
left)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=6"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
mail)
[ $2 = off ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?mail=0"
[ $2 = on ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?mail=1"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
mirror)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=5&value=2"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
out)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=3&value=2"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
reboot)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/reboot.cgi"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
right)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=4"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
sense)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?motion_sensitivity=${2}"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
set)
# sets camera presets 1-16
[ $2 = 1 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=30"
[ $2 = 2 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=32"
[ $2 = 3 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=34"
[ $2 = 4 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=36"
[ $2 = 5 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=38"
[ $2 = 6 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=40"
[ $2 = 7 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=42"
[ $2 = 8 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=44"
[ $2 = 9 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=46"
[ $2 = 10 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=48"
[ $2 = 11 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=50"
[ $2 = 12 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=52"
[ $2 = 13 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=54"
[ $2 = 14 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=56"
[ $2 = 15 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=58"
[ $2 = 16 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=60"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
setup)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/get_params.cgi"
wget -q -O - "${addy}/get_status.cgi"
wget -q -O - "${addy}/get_misc.cgi"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
gsetup)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/get_params.cgi" | grep -i "$2"
wget -q -O - "${addy}/get_status.cgi" | grep -i "$2"
wget -q -O - "${addy}/get_misc.cgi" | grep -i "$2"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
sleep|wait|pause|p|s|w)
sleep $2
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
snap)
wget -q -O ${snapfile} "${addy}/snapshot.cgi?"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
speed)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_misc.cgi?ptz_patrol_rate=$2"
shift; shift; arg=$(($arg - 2));;
stop)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=3"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
up)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=0"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
vert)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=26"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
h|-h|help|--help|*)
echo "sleep|wait|pause|p|s|w- requires argument- will pause script for X seconds.
setup- dumps camera setup (as much as 200 lines)
gsetup- dumps setup but allows you to grep it for keyword. usage: cam gsetup (string)
led- requires argument 0-2. 2 is off, 0/1 on or flashing
snap- save snapshot to /sdcard/cam.jpg
speed- the speed the camera moves. 0-?, 0 is fastest, normal is 2-3
ir- turns IR on or off, must specify on or off
up/down/left/right/stop/center- starts movement, must use separate stop command to stop movement
contrast (0-6)- must specify number
bright (0-16)- must specify number 0-16
vert/horiz- start vert or horiz patrol
50/60/out- set 50hz, 60hz outdoor mode
flip/mirror- flip or mirror the image
alarm- specify on or off
mail- specify on or off to send email on motion detect
interval- image upload interval in seconds, 0 for off, 1 to 65535 for on
sense- motion sensitivity 0-4, 0 being most sensitive
reboot- reboots cam
set- set preset 1-16
go- go to preset 1-16"
shift; arg=$(($arg - 1));;
esac
done
Thursday, February 17, 2011
More Foscam
As I started looking into the commands to control the Foscam, I found that the SDK was released by the Foscam company. It was easy to go through it and whip up a quick script to control most of the camera functions, and I added some functions that weren't documented as well thanks to finding them in various forums. This particular one is for use on Android phones, just change "/system/bin/sh" to "/bin/sh" to run on Linux. It doesn't cover everything, just the functions I wanted to test, but it covers most of them.
#! /system/bin/sh
# Foscam control script
# fubaya @ a-more-common-hades.blogspot.com
## set these options##
user="yourname"
pass="yourpass"
ip="your cams ip or ip:port"
######################
addy="http://${user}:${pass}@${ip}"
case "$1" in
h|-h|help|--help)
echo "snap- save snapshot to /sdcard/cam.jpg
ir- turns IR on or off, must specify on or off
up/down/left/right/stop/center- starts movement, must use stop to stop movement
contrast (0-6)- must specify number
brightness (??)- must specify number, SDK says 0-255. untested
vert/horiz- start vert or horiz patrol
50/60/out- set 50hz, 60hz outdoor mode
flip/mirror- flip or mirror the image
alarm- specify on or off
mail- specify on or off to send email on motion detect
interval- image upload interval in seconds, 0 for off, 1 to 65535 for on
sense- motion sensitivity 0-4, 0 being most sensitive
reboot- reboots cam
set- set preset 1-16
go- go to preset 1-16
examples: ./ThisScript snap
./ThisScript ir off
./ThisScript alarm off
./ThisScript sense 3
./ThisScript go 12
current user/pass/ip setup for this script:
${addy}"
;;
snap)
wget -q -O /sdcard/cam.jpg "${addy}/snapshot.cgi?"
;;
ir)
[ $2 = on ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=95"
[ $2 = off ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=94"
;;
up)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=0"
;;
down)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=2"
;;
left)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=6"
;;
right)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=4"
;;
stop)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=3"
;;
center)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=25"
;;
contrast)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=2&value=$2"
;;
brightness)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=1&value=$2"
;;
vert)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=26"
;;
horiz)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=28"
;;
50)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=3&value=0"
;;
60)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=3&value=1"
;;
out)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=3&value=2"
;;
flip)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=5&value=1"
;;
mirror)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/camera_control.cgi?param=5&value=2"
;;
reboot)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/reboot.cgi"
;;
alarm)
[ $2 = off ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?motion_armed=0"
[ $2 = on ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?motion_armed=1"
;;
sense)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?motion_sensitivity=${2}"
;;
mail)
[ $2 = off ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?mail=0"
[ $2 = on ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?mail=1"
;;
interval)
wget -q -O - "${addy}/set_alarm.cgi?mail=${2}"
;;
set)
[ $2 = 1 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=30"
[ $2 = 2 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=32"
[ $2 = 3 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=34"
[ $2 = 4 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=36"
[ $2 = 5 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=38"
[ $2 = 6 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=40"
[ $2 = 7 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=42"
[ $2 = 8 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=44"
[ $2 = 9 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=46"
[ $2 = 0 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=48"
[ $2 = 11 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=50"
[ $2 = 12 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=52"
[ $2 = 13 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=54"
[ $2 = 14 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=56"
[ $2 = 15 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=58"
[ $2 = 16 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=60"
;;
go)
[ $2 = 1 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=31"
[ $2 = 2 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=33"
[ $2 = 3 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=35"
[ $2 = 4 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=37"
[ $2 = 5 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=39"
[ $2 = 6 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=41"
[ $2 = 7 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=43"
[ $2 = 8 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=45"
[ $2 = 9 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=47"
[ $2 = 10 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=49"
[ $2 = 11 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=51"
[ $2 = 12 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=53"
[ $2 = 13 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=55"
[ $2 = 14 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=57"
[ $2 = 15 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=59"
[ $2 = 16 ] && wget -q -O - "${addy}/decoder_control.cgi?command=61"
;;
*)
echo "try h for help"
;;
esac
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
A new toy
I just got one of these Foscam FI8918W IP cameras and it's really cool. It can pan and tilt, has infrared lights to work at night, motion detection, jacks for audio in and out so you can stream audio and even talk to people through it.. Being an IP camera, it has it's own built-in server that connects to the internet through your home router, either wired or wireless.
The most common way to control it is by pointing your web browser to it's IP address, logging in and viewing the video or controlling the camera. There are also apps for mobile phones to view IP cameras, but the real power is performing commands on the camera using nothing more than specific URLs. For example, grabbing these URLs will give you a snapshot from the camera. They are the same command, just in a different order:
http://User:Pass@IP/snapshot.cgi?
http://IP/snapshot.cgi?user=user&pwd=pass
This one will turn on the camera's infrared lights:
http://User:Pass@IP/decoder_control.cgi?command=95
There are also URLs to pan, tilt and zoom, view the video stream, and adjust various other settings.
While these can be done by typing the URL into a browser, they can also be used in other ways. On the command line, this will tilt the camera down:
wget -q -O - http://User:Pass@IP/decoder_control.cgi?command=2
This two-step Tasker task will save a snapshot from the camera then pop it up on the screen:
1 HTTP get
Server/Port: (the camera's IP address)
Path: snapshot.cgi?user=user&pwd=password
Output File: cam.jpg
2 Popup
Background Image: cam.jpg
Unfortunately, although it runs embedded Linux, it's not open source. The commands seem to be found by people through trial and error, but people have found pretty much all of them. I haven't tested them all, but I look forward to it, and I look forward to integrating the camera with my computer, Tasker, and my home automation.
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