In this article i will show you how to setup a raspberry pi security camera using motion. In the end of this article you will have a fully functioning security camera with a live feed and motion detection.

Requirements

1. Raspberry pi or any other computer
2. Web cam
3. Any kind of debian based distro installed on the pi/computer

Setup

In this article we will be using the motion package (https://motion-project.github.io/)

To get started power on your raspberry pi and ssh into the machine or just connect it to a monitor and a keyboard. Also connect your web cam to the raspberry pi usb port.

The first thing we will have to do is install motion, for that type the following command:
apt install motion
Now start motion with:
systemctl start motion
or
service motion start
Now we are going to change some of the default settings . To do that type:
nano /etc/motion/motion.conf
The first thing that we are going to change is
webcontrol_localhost off
This will enable us to access the stream from other computers.

To view the stream run:

motion

If you get a permission denied error try running

sudo motion

If you got to http://YOUR_IP:8080 you should see a live feed of the web cam

You can change the port under webcontrol_port in the config file eg. webcontrol_port 1234

If you only want the live stream port you can go to http://your_ip:8081

Again you can change that under stream_port.

Now everything should be working fine. All motion detection files will be saved in /var/lib/motion

You can also change loads of other settings. Here are my settings:https://pastebin.com/WGn0NfcW

Read the documentation here: https://motion-project.github.io/motion_guide.html

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