timelapse

A very simple timelapse setup, based off an old smartphone and the IP Webcam (by Pavel Khlebovich) app on the Play store.

Build and Installation

Smartphone

First off get one of those old smartphones and install IP Webvam (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam&hl=en) on it.

Configure the app as you like. I have configured mine to save images in size 1280x960. This seems like a nice compromise between image size and creating timelapse videos later in 720p quality.

Script requirements

There are only three requirements:

• sunwait (https://sourceforge.net/projects/sunwait4windows/)
  • for making smart choices on the Sun setting or rising
• mencoder (apt get install mencoder)
  • for making videos
• bash
  • for running the scripts

Just put the sunwait executable in the same directory as the scripts.

Scripts

There are just two scripts: One for running the timelapse - done is a screen session and one for building a video.

Configuration of the timelapse script

In the timelapse script you must provide 3 things:

• The timelapse interval. Default is 6 minutes.
• The coordinate of the camera. Use Google maps for this, just copy out the coordinates from the Maps URL. Example: https://www.google.dk/maps/@55.5386934,11.3729296,19.75z. Here you want the numbers 55... and 11... and add N,E,S,W depending on where in the world it is. Northern Europe is 55N, 11E
• URL to the smartphone running the IP Camera app.

Running

You should be ready now to do a timelapse. Make sure ample space is available, or setup some automatics to move files to large storage over time. run screen and then simply $ ./timelapse.sh

If the Sun is still up, you should now get images. The script will run until terminated.