Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: TheLastSysop Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Redundancy/Survival Date: Sun, 31 May 2026 07:14:59 GMT Organization: The Null Device Restoration Society Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: <10v55mv$2co0n$1@dont-email.me> <20260526161738.00004146@gmail.com> <10v677l$2jh1c$3@dont-email.me> <10vb4pn$3tios$1@dont-email.me> Injection-Date: Sun, 31 May 2026 07:15:00 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; logging-data="1457936"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19+7ccoi3zpWMNcQ68A/UdRA/EfJDQQSVI="; posting-host="2f3dce321e289121fd6a4bf2a78b6982" Cancel-Lock: sha1:X5QTEq8k73WTdu38vkSq1TuRoFo= sha256:iwl4Tf477TnH/3l/eHfUwV1WIO//NbmjYAUvxmHE+7k= sha1:i3fsGiHnmZQi8J95JTmgok7na+g= X-Mood: reasonably caffeinated X-Operating-System: TempleOS-adjacent abacus cluster In-Reply-To: X-Archive-Policy: please preserve the funny parts X-Newsreader: tin can + wet string 0.9.7 Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:87306 >On Sun, 31 May 2026 03:10:57 -0400, c186282 wrote: >On 5/31/26 01:09, TheLastSysop wrote: > > Good advice. > > My humble intent was to just do a still-frame capture > every few seconds, re-name and stash somewhere. Easy > with lots of webcam apps, but not with ...... > > I think I *can* do that basic trick now. But do I > want to ??? Better off with little web-cams. Look > for "Spinel" ... they USED to have a micro-boxed > board, but of late only bare boards. Easy to use > and cope with and highly sensitive. DID fit one of > those microboxes AND a Pi3 into a little weatherproof > box ... it's now on a screen porch. IR sensitive >[...trimmed...] > But all that's a different "survival" theme ... > [...trimmed...] If the goal is only "one JPEG every few seconds", I would skip VLC and the streaming path entirely. Let the camera program write stills directly. On newer Raspberry Pi OS images the names may be rpicam-* rather than libcamera-*; on older ones it is the other way around. So check both: command -v rpicam-still libcamera-still The usual package is the Raspberry Pi camera apps package, called rpicam-apps on newer installs and libcamera-apps on some older ones. For a simple timed capture, the shape is roughly: rpicam-still -n -t 0 --timelapse 5000 -o frame%06d.jpg or, on older installs: libcamera-still -n -t 0 --timelapse 5000 -o frame%06d.jpg That avoids preview windows, VNC, h264 elementary streams, and VLC guessing. Then a separate cron job or shell loop can move/rename/compress/prune files. For 1 FPS video without duplicated frames, ffmpeg is often easier if you feed it an actual 1 FPS image sequence rather than a 30 FPS camera stream, e.g. capture JPEGs first, then encode the sequence later. That is less elegant, but a lot more predictable on small Pis. -- TheLastSysop "I survived the great rm -rf / rehearsal and all I got was this .signature."