In the contemporary life, speed is becoming a primary driving force behind productivity, which indeed helps people to achieve their goals and dreams. However we start to forget about the simple beauty around our daily life, like the sunshine, the fresh air, etc.

Ever since I got interested in planting (mainly vegetables), I am touching and feeling the power of nature (soil). After came cross a few Youtube videos, where the plant growing process is time-elapsed, I decide to explore this fascinating world by myself. Therefore I set up my Raspberry pi to do my own experiments. Hopefully interesting results will delivered in the coming months.

Install Raspberry Pi OS

https://www.raspberrypi.org/software

Camera module

  • Install the camera module on the raspberry pi
Before and after assembly.
  • Enable the camera on the raspberry pi
sudo raspi-config
# -> Interfacing Option -> Camera
reboot
  • Testing the camera
raspistill -v -o test.jpg

WIFI

  • Install WIFI driver for TP-LINK TL-WN725N V2

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=62371

sudo wget http://downloads.fars-robotics.net/wifi-drivers/install-wifi -O /usr/bin/install-wifi
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/install-wif
reboot
  • Add your WIFI information

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md

sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

network={
    ssid="your wifi account"
    psk="your wifi password"
}
  • Test WIFI
ping www.google.com

SSH

  • Enable SSH on Raspberry pi

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/

  • Get the IP of your raspberry pi
hostname -I
  • Test SSH connection from your remote machine
ssh pi@<IP>
  • Set the SSH login without password

http://www.linuxproblem.org/art_9.html

Time elapse shots

  • Prepare a BASH script for camera-shot

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/camera/raspicam/raspistill.md

#!/bin/bash

DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S")
raspistill -vf -hf -o /home/pi/camera/$DATE.jpg
  • Set up a CRON job

www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/camera/raspicam/timelapse.md

crontab -e

* * * * * /home/pi/camera.sh 2>&1

Upload images from raspberry pi to Dropbox

  • Install the Dropbox Uploader

    https://github.com/andreafabrizi/Dropbox-Uploader/#usage

  • Set up a CRON job for the dropbox transfer
crontab -e

# Upload images every 30 min
30 * * * * ./Dropbox-Uploader/dropbox_uploader.sh -f /home/pi/.dropbox_uploader upload /home/pi/camera/*.jpg  /

# Empty the camera folder every hour
* 1 * * * rm /home/pi/camera/*.jpg

Stitch images to video

https://nicholasnadeau.me/post/2020/5/converting-gopro-timelapse-to-a-video-or-gif-with-imagemagick-and-ffmpeg

  • Rename Files to Sequential Numbers
ls | cat -n | while read n f; do mv "$f" "$n.jpg"; done
  • Convert to a video
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -i %d.JPG -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

Summary

In testing.