Garage Automation Project – Further Update

As I said below in the last Raspberry Pi post, this project will never really be over.

A while ago, the Logitech Web Cam attached to the PI Model B assigned to door opener duties (which gave images of the inside of the garage) failed. I used these cameras because I had one in stock, and bought the second one second hand, but they are much too expensive new to replace with a new one.

I have been doing without this view for a while, and its a bit frustrating. So I looked around for cheap alternatives, but webcams are no longer cheap.

But Raspberry Pi cameras are quite reasonable. There are 3 versions, the new 12megapixel with all its fancy lenses – not at all what I want, the 8MP version 2 camera, the current base model, which also comes in an infrared version, and the discontinued 5MP version 1. Looking around, I saw that Jaycar the local electronics supplier, was selling the discontinued V1 at clearance prices, just NZ$22 each. So I bought one.

Installation was easy enough, I did some relocating of the Raspberry Pi so that it was very close to where I wanted the camera with its 150mm ribbon cable. Its now screwed to the ceiling of the garage, and the door opener wires and the power supply all travel along ducting, so its reasonably neat. I put the camera onto a metal bracket I had lying around, which provides a reasonable range of movement by bending and twisting!

The PI booted up fine after it was installed, so I logged onto the Raspberry Pi, used the “sudo raspi-config” command, chose option 5, the Interfacing Options, and changed option p1 (enable/disable the the connection to the Raspberry Pi camera) to yes. I also added the line “disable_camera_led=1” to the boot/confg.sys file (the camera has a very bright LED, and apparently draws a reasonable amount of power), and rebooted.

A couple of minutes later, success! The camera worked with no further changes. A bit of adjusting of the camera angle, and it was all done. The software used to drive the webcams, namely Motion, picked up the new camera, and fed it in the normal way.