motion-3.1.19 Video Surveillance Tool Packaged for puppy linux by: William McEwan (puppy linux member mcewanw). Revision 1, 05sep2007 Home Webpage for Motion: http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome This puppy linux pet is was produced from the original Damn Small Linux compilation found at: http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/mydsl/multimedia/motion.tar.gz dated: 04/14/2005 [Thanks are due newOldUser of the DSL community. The application looks for its config file motion.conf in /home/knoppix or in ~/.motion so perhaps the source originally comes from the knoppix distribution?] For ease of future upgrade, I have tried to keep the directory structure of my installation pet for motion as close to the original DSL installation as possible. This is a simple compilation of motion which, for ease of installation, has been stripped of mysql and ffmpeg operability. However, there is nothing to stop a more complex compilation, with more facility, being successful on puppy linux. ------------- Some Details: I extracted motion.tar.gz into a single directory motion-3.1.19 I then created the directory motion-3.1.19/root/,motion and moved motion.conf from motion-3.1.19/home/dsl into there so that the application motion would be able to find motion.conf post-installation. I then used dir2pet to produce the puppy linux pet archive motion-3.1.19.pet. I have arranged for the installation to add a mini-eye.xpm icon and Motion-3.1.19 Video Surveillance entry to the main JWM menu under Multimedia. To make it easier to stop motion running when desired, I use the main menu to start motion via a simple shell script, /root/.motion/motion.sh which opens a controlling rxvt console. The advantage of that method is that it makes it easy to stop motion running when desired by clicking on the console and pressing Ctrl-C. The user can also more easily finetune the start-up procedure, if they wish, by editing motion.sh This motion-3.1.19.pet archive stores the following files and directories on your system: /root/.motion/ /root/.motion/readme.txt [this file] /root/.motion/motion.conf [the application's configuration file (text)] /root/.motion/motion.sh [a simple shell script which can be used to start motion in a controlling rxtv shell] /opt/motion/motion [the main application] /home/dsl/ /home/dsl/motion/ /home/dsl/motion/pics/ [the default location where the captured jpeg images are stored] /home/dsl/motionScript [?] /home/dsl/motionTiming.log [?] /usr/share/applications/motion.desktop -------------- Before running motion make sure your webcam is setup and working correctly. Unless you have already arranged that, you may first need to: depmod -a; modprobe videodev; modprobe This pet does not include any webcam driver modules, you must find the approprate one for your webcam and install that yourself. You may find some useful information related to that in a howto I have written (HOWTO: Manually get your webcam and/or TV card working) and posted to the puppy murga-linux forum at: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=21464 To run motion, either: * click on JWM menu > Multimedia > Motion-3.1.19 Video Surveillance or * open an rxvt or any commandline window and enter the command: /opt/motion/motion or * open a file manager window at /root/.motion and single-click on the motion.sh application icon found there or * open a file manager window at /opt/motion and single-click on the motion application icon found there The first three of these method have the advantage that you can easily press keys Ctrl-C to stop motion running. Alternatively, you can always use the command top (or ps) to obtain the process id of the running motion application and then enter kill to terminate it. -------------- After installation, motion is initially configured to store the jpeg images it captures in the directory /home/dsl/motion/pics. If you wish them to be stored in a different directory, edit /root/.motion/motion.conf and change the line starting with target_dir to wherever you wish your images to go. Refer to http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome for detailed information on using motion and for detailed help on understanding and modifying its configuration file motion.conf ------------- For an alternative, sophisticated solution, which uses the "zoneminder" video surveillance package (from http:://www.zoneminder.com), you might like to try the Puppy Watchdog distribution available via: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/WatchDog