Folder_watcher not working - no errors?

Configuration
1

I’ve setup the folder_watcher component to monitor a folder, and update a input_text field - but nothing happens, no errors, no update - any advice on where to start looking? I’ve tried giving the lest restrictions possible just to get it to work

/media/Security/motion
drwxrwxrwx 2 homeassistant homeassistant 0 May 12 2018 motion

configuration.yaml:
whitelist_external_dirs:
- /media/Security/motion
folder_watcher:

  • folder: /media/Security/motion
    patterns:
    • ‘*.mkv’
    • ‘*.mp4’
    • ‘*.avi’
    • ‘*.mov’

automation.yaml:

  • alias: “Admin - set last_security_vid variable”
    trigger:
    event_data: {“event_type”:“created”}
    event_type: folder_watcher
    platform: event
    action:
    service: input_text.set_value
    data_template:
    entity_id: input_text.last_security_vid
    value: ’ {{ trigger.event.data.path }} ’

Literally - nothing happens when files are created in the directory.

2

Same here no errors in log still nothing happening:(
Home Assistant
0.69.0
hassbian
already tried to (re)install the watchdog lib.

#trusted directories for sending files
whitelist_external_dirs:

  • /tmp

folder_watcher:

  • folder: /tmp
    patterns:
    • ‘*.avi’

automation.yaml:

  • alias: “Motion Video created”
    hide_entity: true
    trigger:
    platform: event
    event_type: folder_watcher
    event_data:
    event_type: created
    action:
    • service: notify.telegram
      data:
      message: ‘Bewegung in der Wohnung!’
      data:
      video:
      - file: “{{ trigger.event.data.path }}”
3

If this helps, I have it working but I don’t have a whitelist setup but this limits you to where you can have folder watcher monitor files.
For me under homeassistant’s config directory www/ I created subdirectories to monitor.

folder_watcher:
  - folder: /PATH_TO_HA_CONFIG/.homeassistant/www/SUB_DIR
    patterns:
      - '*.jpg'

Whenever a JPEG file is created under SUB_DIR, folder watcher sees it.

4

I get the same thing - doesn’t work for me. No errors logged.

(the sub folder under www is a link to a smb share - but, access is fine - motion, etc is happily writing there, I can also access items such as jpg files from home-assistant on the share)

5

The watched folder needs to be accessible directly by the OS, and will not work on network drives. Please see the docs to understand how watchdog operates https://pythonhosted.org/watchdog/

I’ve created an issue to address this, but I’m not sure the solution https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/14677

Cheers

6

@xrapidx @wmaker can you try the folder sensor and see if this works? trying to determine what the issue is here

7

Sorry or the delay… will give it a try over the weekend, having issues with my install so redoing everything.

8

@robmarkcole Sorry, I’ve been out for a couple of weeks. Would you still like for me to try folder sensor?

9

I can confirm folder_sensor works - if I understand correctly, it only gives the size and count of whats in the folder?

10

Please do try

11

folder_sensor works for me. I did two cases:

  1. No white list, but folder_sensor monitoring sub-directory under www
sensor:
  - platform: folder
    folder: /PATH_TO_HA_CONFIG/.homeassistant/www/SUB_DIR
  1. Using White List (without White List, this does NOT work)
homeassistant:
  whitelist_external_dirs:
    - /PATH_OF_INTEREST
sensor:
  - platform: folder
    folder: /PATH_OF_INTEREST

I added and deleted files, and the state (size in MB) and attributes (number of files, byte size) are updated after 5 to 15 seconds.

12

Interesting, folder_watcher should default to polling if reachable but not local. Is the drive a usb or external?

1 Like
13

Ah…I see what you’re after now (test with network drive).
No my file system is all local drive.

14

My test was with a mounted network folder in a home-assistant docker container. It worked for the sensor, but not for the watcher.

15

This is interesting - I just checked my home-assistant error log, and I have just two errors:

(sqlite3.OperationalError) locking protocol [SQL: ‘INSERT INTO events (event_type, event_data, origin, time_fired, created) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)’] [parameters: (‘folder_watcher’, ‘{“event_type”: “modified”, “path”: “/Security/44-20180612065038.mp4”, “file”: “44-20180612065038.mp4”, “folder”: “/Security”}’, ‘LOCAL’, ‘2018-06-12 06:50:44.415257’, ‘2018-06-12 06:50:47.074768’)] (Background on this error at: http://sqlalche.me/e/e3q8). (retrying in 3 seconds)
Log Details (ERROR)
Tue Jun 12 2018 08:50:57 GMT+0200 (South Africa Standard Time)

Error executing query: (sqlite3.OperationalError) locking protocol [SQL: ‘INSERT INTO events (event_type, event_data, origin, time_fired, created) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)’] [parameters: (‘folder_watcher’, ‘{“event_type”: “modified”, “path”: “/Security/44-20180612065038.mp4”, “file”: “44-20180612065038.mp4”, “folder”: “/Security”}’, ‘LOCAL’, ‘2018-06-12 06:50:44.415257’, ‘2018-06-12 06:50:47.074768’)] (Background on this error at: http://sqlalche.me/e/e3q8)

16

I use Ubuntu and I locally mounted a samba (cifs) to a remote file system.
I also added the newly mounted directory to the white list. Folder_sensor worked.
It took anywhere from a couple of seconds to as much as 35 seconds to recognize
file adds/deletes.

17

Think I might look into using something else. My requirement is quite simple, I just want to send a telegram video message when motion is captured on an outdoor camera.

I would have been nice to do as an automation for the ability to easily disable or enable the “service”

18

I have the same problem.

19

Guys I had also problems with the folder watcher, you can try this in order to check if the underlying library works as expected:

# d1.py is the sample script from this site: https://pythonhosted.org/watchdog/quickstart.html#a-simple-example
/tmp # python3 d1.py 
2019-09-08 22:16:32 - Modified file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_latest.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:32 - Modified file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_latest.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:32 - Created file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_20190908_221631.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:32 - Modified directory: .
2019-09-08 22:16:32 - Modified file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_20190908_221631.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:34 - Modified file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_latest.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:34 - Modified file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_latest.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:34 - Created file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_20190908_221633.jpg
2019-09-08 22:16:34 - Modified directory: .
2019-09-08 22:16:34 - Modified file: ./camera_doods_flur_unten_20190908_221633.jpg
20

Hello, did you get an answer for this after? I’m in the same situation, currently sending a notification when my camera detects a person, but sometimes the media isn’t available straight away (thanks nest) so want to trigger based on a file being created instead of the device