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FAQ
Snapshot URL serves a single JPEG file when requested. The served JPEG image is always the most recently captured frame. You can use this URL as the src attribute of an <img> HTML tag but keep in mind that it won't update automatically. You shouldn't use this unless you know what you are doing.
Streaming URL provides MJPEG streaming. It can be used as a source for other applications that deal with video streams and know how to handle MJPEGs, or it can be used as the src attribute of an <img> HTML tag.
Note: Internet Explorer doesn't support MJPEG streams at all; Chrome plays them nicely if they are part of a web page but won't display anything if the streaming URL is entered directly in the address bar.
Embed URL provides a complete standalone HTML document (i.e. web page) that can be opened in most modern browsers and that will refresh automatically. Think of it as the camera frame part of the UI without any surrounding elements. You can use this to embed the stream into another web page, using an <iframe> HTML tag.
If you're lucky and you have motionPie installed on one of the boards with automatic update support, you'll find a Check button next to the Software Update settings item, in the settings panel.
The updating process is always started by you and is never done automatically. It will first check for new stable versions and, following your confirmation, it will download and apply the update.
Currently, automatic updates are available only for the Raspberry PI and Raspberry PI 2 boards. If you don't see that button, you probably run motionPie on another board.
Yes, the automatic update process will preserve all of your settings and media files that are saved on the SD card.
I have started the update process several minutes ago and it still hasn't finished. What should I do?
The update process may take a considerable amount of time, being influenced by factors like your network connection's speed, the performance of your SD card, as well as the CPU speed. Expect it to be ready within 5 minutes, but don't interrupt it before a half an our.
If after 30 minutes it still hasn't finished, chances are that something went wrong. You can either login and access the shell to inspect the /var/log/motioneye.log file to see what went wrong, or you can install the new version manually.
If you don't care about your previous settings and media files saved on the SD card, you can proceed with installing the new version from scratch. If you want to preserve your settings (and media files), you'll need to make a backup of your SD card's data partition (you'll probably need Linux for that), and restore it later, after you have manually installed the new version.
Make sure you use root or admin as username. admin is just an alias for root. Use the password you set for the administrator in the UI. By default (or when the administrator's password is empty), you need to enter the board's serial number as password.
Also keep in mind that passwords are applied at boot so your new password will be fully effective only after a reboot.
motionPie is not a general-purpose Linux distribution. You can't install packages like you do with a normal distro. If you need to further customize your setup, installing motionEye on a common distro is recommended.
Both the boot and the root partitions are mounted read-only to prevent filesystem corruption. If you want to make changes to a file on any of these two partitions, re-mount them as writable:
mount -o remount,rw /
mount -o remount,rw /boot
motionPie will never display anything beautiful on your monitor - it is meant to only be used from a web browser. The ugly text that appears on the monitor is actually useful when debugging. Most users should ignore it.
Your motionPie's hostname is displayed on the top bar, in the UI, when logged in as administrator. It has the form mp-xxxxxxxx, where xxxxxxxx is the serial number. The hostname also shows up when you're prompted to log in a shell (SSH/TTY).
First of all, search through the list of issues; someone else might have already reported your issue. If you found it, feel free to contribute to the issue with comments.
If your issue hasn't been reported yet, report it yourself. Don't be afraid to attach some screenshots; they can be extremely helpful when explaining visual/UI-related problems.
If you know your way around Linux, there are a bunch of log files residing in /data/log directory, on a running motionPie instance. If it's easier for you, you can insert the SD card into your laptop and you'll find the log directory in the root of the third (and biggest) partition. Mind you that it's an ext4 partition so your Windows machine won't see it.
Attaching the (archived) log directory to the reported issue may help identifying the cause of your problem. Never attach configuration files (the ones found in /data/etc) before removing sensitive data from them (e.g. passwords, public IP addresses, etc).