Raspberry pi camera servers

This is notes from installation multi-raspberry pi camera (3 or 5 raspberry pi, each with a camera). The camera images is then collected in one single camera server.

This configuration guide is for the raspberry pi cameras and for the single camera server.

Files needed

In mobotware a configuration example is in mobotware/build/config/gogo and mobotware/build/config/gogo/picam.

ls mobotware/build/config/gogo
  picam  rhdconfig.xml  ucamserver.ini
ls mobotware/build/config/gogo/picam
  aukeeper.ini  connectrhd.rule  keepcam.rule  keeplaser.rule  keepnav.rule  rc.local  startKeeper  ucamserver.ini

In mobotware/build/config/gogo/picam is the configuration files for the raspberry pi camera, the mobotware/build/config/gogo/ucamserver.ini is the configuration file for the single image collecting camera server (mostly for image recording).

Raspberry pi camera

The raspberry pi cameras in this example is named rpi6, rpi7, ... rpi10 as their hostname (in /etc/hostname).

Keeper

The keeper is a server that starts the cameraserver when needed (and restarts it if it crashes or gets stuck in other ways).

The Keeper should be started at reboot using the /etc/rc.local, like this

# rc.local
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.                                                                                                 # Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other                                                                                                     # value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits. 
#
# By default this script does nothing.
# Print the IP address
_IP=$(hostname -I) || true
if [ "$_IP" ]; then
  printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP"
fi
# start keeper
su -c "/home/local/startKeeper" local
#
exit 0