pi-camera-timelapse

Heavily inspired by:

• Armin Hinterwirth (https://github.com/amphioxus) - https://www.amphioxus.org/content/timelapse-time-stamp-overlay

Click to view Video below

Some helpful Python scripts for achieving a timelapse with your Rapsberry Pi Camera

timelapse.py is the main script

Dependencies on

• video_stitcher.py
• timestamper.py

Python lib dependencies are:

• ffmpeg (usually comes with Pi OS)
• Pillow (aka PIL, also should ship with Pi)

Font dependencies

• /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeMono.ttf

Steps

• Initial Images will be outputted to imgXXXXXX.jpg inside the output folder
• Next, timestamps are drawn onto the images, they're stored as imgXXXXXX-resized.jpg
• Finally the imgXXXXXX-resized.jpg images are stitched into a video inside output/video folder as timelapse_YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmSS.mp4
• Modify main() inside timelapse.py to use what you need

Usage examples

python3 timelapse.py [length in seconds] [interval in seconds] [directory to output]

Example 1) Run for 1 hour with 1 minute intervals, output to /home/pi/Camera

python3 timelapse.py 3600 60 /home/pi/Camera

Example 2) Run for 8 hours with 1 hour intervals, output to /home/pi/Camera

python3 timelapse.py 28800 3600 /home/pi/Camera

Example 3) Run for 1 minute with 1 second intervals, output to /home/pi/Camera

python3 timelapse.py 60 1 /home/pi/Camera

Rotation

An additional OPTIONAL 4th command line argument has been added for rotation, it behaves as per this.

Options are 0, 90, 180, and 270

Example 4) Run for 1 minute with 1 second intervals, output to /home/pi/Camera, rotation at 270

python3 timelapse.py 60 1 /home/pi/Camera 270

Run in background

Example 4) Will do the following:

• Run as cronjob for 1 minute with 1 second intervals
• Output images and video to /home/pi/Camera
• Run at 4AM every morning
• Output the Logs to a file inside my Camera folder

Open cron config

crontab -e

Add line to the end of the file

0 4 * * * python3 /home/pi/Camera/timelapse.py 60 1 /home/pi/Camera >> /home/pi/Camera/output.log 2>$

CTRL+X and 'y' to confirm saved changes

Some helpful links

• https://crontab.guru/
• https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/camera/raspicam/
• https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting-started-with-picamera
• https://picamera.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.10/api_camera.html