Purr View

• Takes stream from any amount of cameras (or any video stream that is accepted by opencv python library) and detects motion on them.
• If motion is detected, video (with some pre-buffer and post-buffer) is saved locally or uploaded to FTP server (can do one or another, or both).
• Streams can be viewed via web browser (this feature supports only up to 4 streams).

Hardware requirements

I will be assuming example of 1 cam, 1280 x 720 @ 25 FPS, running on Raspberry PI 5, using example configuration

• RAM: recommended at least 2GB
  • this also heavily depends on configuration of pre-buffer and max length of the video
• CPU: process consumes around 8% of the CPU while idling in detection
  • this increases to 15% when previewing the video stream
  • this further increases when video is being rendered (usually topping one core)
    • this single core speed also limits the max FPS of the video stream (video is rendered during recording, to avoid enormous RAM requirements)
• GPU: not needed
• Camera: any USB camera/-s (or any video stream that is accepted by opencv python library)

OS requirements:

• debian based linux
• installed python3.8 or higher (python3.11 or higher recommended, because of EOL https://devguide.python.org/versions/)
• installed git
• mounted /dev/shm with (should be already there on most modern linux distros)
  • size depends on number of video streams, resolution and FPS, but make sure to have allocated enaugh (for my case 2GB)
• GUI not needed

FTP server requirements (optional):

• any FTP/FTPS running server with default port 21 and default port range for FTPS
  • tested on linux (FTPS), but it should also work on windows

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/DotaPie/purr-view.git && cd ./purr-view

Open ./src/config.json and edit as you want (cams, ftp server, paths, ...)

• Configuration will work out-of-box, except cameras configuration (mainly number of cameras and their device paths)

sudo bash ./install.sh

Verify service is up and runing and check logs

We can also filter by keyword, for example "[SYS]"

sudo systemctl status purr-view
sudo journalctl -u purr-view.service -n 100 -f 
sudo journalctl -u purr-view.service -n 100 -f -g '\[SYS\]'

Preview camera streams

Supports only up to 4 video stream views

http://purrview.local

Change configuration only

sudo nano /opt/PurrView/config.json
sudo systemctl restart purr-view

Re-deploy service easily after changing files in ./src

In case we change source files or config again in ./src directory

sudo bash ./re-deploy.sh