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LetsLapse

A DIY time-lapse system, built around Raspberry Pi hardware

LetsLapse allows you to capture day to night time-lapses sequences on affordable hardare, while producing outstanding results.

To get started, you will need a Raspberry Pi device, a compatible camera, MicroSD card and power source. As for specifics, you can run this from a Pi 3, 4, 4B or Pi Zero W, with a range of cameras.

LetsLapse has been developed with Pi Zero W and HQ Camera Module in mind, for compact size and low power requiremens allowing for long shoots.

To proceed, you must have a Pi and Camera connected. See the first three pages of https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting-started-with-picamera, until it says "Start up your Raspberry Pi". You don't need to do this yet for this process.

Install Guide

1) Install Raspberry Pi OS

See https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/ for the Raspberry Pi Imager. A fast SD card is required, and the bigger the better.

Recommend Raspberry Pi OS Lite, as this has the smallest footprint and excudes stuff that can slow the device down - like a pretty operating system which isn't required.

Follow the instructions to ensure the process is verified.

2) Set up Raspberry Pi WiFi and system access

See https://github.com/regularsteven/letslapse/. We need to put settings on the MicroSD card to configure wireless network and access to the OS.

  1. Place wpa_supplicant.conf (inside 'install' folder) to the SD card partition called "Boot" of your newly formatted MicroSD card

    Edit the file to put your own WiFi credentials in this file. The formatting matters - so put your wireless network(s) inside the "quotations". If you have a mobile phone hotspot, you can add this and your home network. The Pi will connect to whatever it see's first, in order of their placement.

  2. Create an empty file called 'ssh' in the same "Boot" partition. This file tells the Pi OS to allow 'SSH' (logging in remote) to occur.

    This can be called ssh.txt or just 'ssh'.

3) Start and find the Pi on your network

Plug the MicroSD card to the Pi and plug in power. Depending on the device, it can take some time to boot up. We will be running the install with no screen plugged in, so we need to wait for the device to be on the network.

If you're in luck, you can access the device via 'raspberrypi.local' on your network. However, not all routers support this, so it might be a little more work to know the Pi's 'address' on your network.

In a Terminal window (MacOS / Linux) or Command Shell (Windows), type:

 ping raspberrypi.local 

If you're lucky, you'll see "64 bytes from raspberrypi (10.3.141.212): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.265 ms", or similar.

In this event, you don't need to worry about IP addresses. You can jump to step 4.

If you're not a lucky person, we need to find the IP address. This can be found a number of ways.

  1. Get it from your router (if you know it) or WiFi Hotspot.

    Logging into your router should show you DHCP connections, along with IP addresses and names. Look for 'raspberrypi', and then you will have your IP address. Many Android and iOS devices with a HotSpot will show connections. Many devices (iPhone's / Samsung Galaxy's) will show the IP addresses.

  2. In a Terminal window or Command Shell, scan the network, and take note of the output message. You're looking for something like "10.1.2.9" or "192.168.1.9".

    This runs a scan across the network you're own and loks for the hardware of the network adapter, which is unique to the Pi Zero or Pi4

    a) MacOS / Linux, looking for Pi Zero:

    arp -na | grep -i b8:27:eb
    

    b) MacOS / Linux, looking for Pi4 (has a different MAC ID):

    arp -na | grep -i dc:a6:32
    

    c) Windows:

    nslookup raspberrypi 
    

Take note of the IP address - this is how you need to connect and configure the device. Once you've got the IP, you can ping to test the connectivity like above, only with the IP and not the name. For example:

 ping 192.168.0.9 

4) Log in with SSH

MacOS and Linux can use Terminal, but Windows may require extra configuration.

This step is about 'SSH-ing' into the device. SSH is a protocol, like HTTP or FTP, that allows you to log in to the device. We need to SSH in to run some updates and set up the device.

MacOS / Linux

If you're the lucky one with raspberrypi.local found in step 3, you don't need the 'IP' (192.168.0.9).

ssh pi@192.168.0.9

OR

ssh pi@raspberrypi.local

You'll be asked for the password. Because this is brand-new, the password is raspberry

Note: If you've done this before, you might be rejected. In this instance,run

ssh-keygen -R raspberrypi.local

Windows

Open Power Shell and type 'ssh pi@192.168.0.9', where 192.168.0.9 is the IP of your device as identified in step 3. If it works, great. If not, I suggest a tool called Putty - it's a simple SSH client which allows for remote connections. See https://www.putty.org/ and find the Download link. In most instances, you want "MSI (‘Windows Installer’) 64-bit x86". Download and install. Once installed, open up.

In here, you can enter the IP, username and password.

Username: pi

Password: raspberry

Address: IP as found in step three.

Install LetsLapse / Update the Pi OS

  1. Ideally, you should update your password. Do, or don't. But ideally you do. Type the following and follow prompts:

    passwd
    
  2. Update the OS / Software with latest from Raspbbery Pi

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
    
  3. Install 'git'. This allows us to 'clone' LetsLapse code, and BC.

    sudo apt install git -y
    sudo apt install bc -y
    
  4. Clone LetsLapse

    git clone https://github.com/regularsteven/letslapse
    
  5. Run install script

    cd letslapse
    sudo sh install.sh 
    

    This may take some time, and will install a number of 'dependencies', as well as configure your device to talk / communicate with your camera. Once installed, you will need to restart. You may wish to set up some other aspects of Raspberry Pi, such as the timezone, location settings, and so on. You can do this with "sudo raspi-config" (in the terminal), but this isn't mandatory.

  6. Reboot and wait...

Run LetsLapse

If everything above worked, LetsLapse is installed. In a browser on your network, type the IP address or raspberrypi.local into your browser. If we've got this far, it's good to go.

What have we done? What's LetsLapse

Additional Notes

For, um, cleaning up...

Possible depencies

sudo apt install python3-pip -y
sudo apt install python3-pip
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install --upgrade Pillow
python3 -m pip install --upgrade Pillow --global-option="build_ext" --global-option="--enable-[feature]"
sudo apt install libopenjp2-7 libopenjp2-7-dev libopenjp2-tools

Additional requirements to run blending tools

sudo pip3 install opencv
sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev
sudo pip3 install piexif

For opencv and image processing

python3 -m pip install --upgrade imutils
python3 -m pip3 install opencv-contrib-python
python3 -m pip install opencv-python - this worked, not contrib version
python3 -m pip install numpy
python3 -m pip install picamera

Windows / File Access

Install SAMBA for simple filesystem access

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin 
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add the following to the bottom:

[mypishare]
        path = /home/pi/letslapse
        writeable=Yes
        create mask=0777
        directory mask=0777
        public=no

Create a user for SAMBA access

sudo smbpasswd -a pi
sudo systemctl restart smbd 

POWER REDUCTION

Much of the following is automated inside the install script, but noted for reference

Remove bluetooth

sudo pico /boot/config.txt

Add below, save and close the file Permalink

#Disable Bluetooth
dtoverlay=disable-bt

or remove everything

sudo apt-get purge bluez -y
sudo apt-get autoremove -y

Kill LED light on zero

echo none | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness

Add the following to config:

sudo pico /boot/config.txt
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=on

Disable hdmi

/usr/bin/tvservice -o
sudo pico /etc/rc.local

Add the following to the bottom:

 f /usr/bin/tvservice -o

Troubleshooting notes

sometimes the camera crashes - find it and kill it

ps -A | grep raspi
sudo kill 1599 

Issues with performance

Issues have been found with slow SD cards. If there's an issue that's hard to explain, verify the SD card can work at reasonable performance.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/sd-card-speed-test/ cd /usr/share/agnostics/ sudo sh /usr/share/agnostics/sdtest.sh

Update Pi Firmware

Some older devices may need a real update. In the instance things just aren't right, run the following to update

sudo rpi-update

Additional tools to remove - potential speed optimisations

Can the following be removed?

  • aplay
  • pulseaudio
  • xserver related

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LetsLapse - Let’s Make Time-Lapse

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