Track your cat with HomeAssisstant (Remote Raspberry with PiNoIR Camera) and use ffmpeg and telegram to send a video

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Hey!

Lots of interesting projects in the past thanks to cats

( @teachingbirds (Smart Litter Box (or Smart Cats)))

Got a spare Raspberry and PiNoir camera module ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/pi-noir-camera-v2/ ) and decided to track when and how often my cat leaves and returns to his favorite sleeping spot.

All credits for the initial setup go to https://einar.slaskete.net/2018/08/16/using-a-raspberry-pi-as-a-surveillance-camera-in-home-assistant/ (I don’t know if the author is also registered here but a big thank you to Einar!)

My changes:
Added another ffmpeg shell command to make the video compatible with telegram standards
Shutdown/Restart for the pi via ssh
some (rather useful) sensors for remote CPU temperature and data usage

The SSH Part:
I won’t repeat how to add ssh support to the pi and that you have to change the default password for the pi user (basically add a file with no content named “ssh” to the boot partion and you are done)

I use a shell_command to shutdown or reboot the Raspberry via ssh (authenticated with a private key generated only for this purpose).

Generate a ssh key and add it the to the authorized_users file in /home/pi/.ssh/

I’ve restricted the usage for this key to some commands with a bash helper script (log below)

Shell Log (ssh to the pi):

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ pwd
/home/pi
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ mkdir .ssh && cd .ssh
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ssh-keygen -C "HomeAssistantRemote-$(whoami)@$(uname -n)-$(date -I)" -t ed25519 -f HA_Remote_Key
Generating public/private ed25519 key pair.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in HA_Remote_Key.
Your public key has been saved in HA_Remote_Key.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
....
..
.
pi@raspberrypi:~/.ssh $ cat allowed-commands.sh 
#!/bin/sh
#
# You can have only one forced command in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Use this
# wrapper to allow several commands.

case "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" in
    "sudo systemctl restart raspicam.service")
        sudo systemctl restart raspicam.service
        ;;
    "sudo shutdown -r now")
        sudo shutdown -r now
        ;;
    "sudo shutdown -h now")
        sudo shutdown -h now
        ;;
    "sudo cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp")
        sudo cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
        ;;
    "uptime")
        uptime
        ;; 
   *)
        echo "Access denied"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac


pi@raspberrypi:~/.ssh $ echo "command=\"/home/pi/.ssh/allowed-commands.sh\"" `cat HA_Remote_Key.pub` >> authorized_keys

Save “HA_Remote_Key” on your HomeAssistant Server (or any other machine of your choice with a working ssh client) and test if everything works with the command:

ssh pi@-IPv4-of-your-Raspberry -i /path/to/your/HA_Remote_Key 'sudo cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp'

and

ssh pi@-IPv4-of-your-Raspberry -i /path/to/your/HA_Remote_Key 'whoami'

First command should return sth like “49926” and the seconed one “Access denied”

Home Assistant will use “shell_command” to execute the commands via ssh. (Full link to my package at the end of the post)

Example:

shell_command:
  ssh_shutdown_rpi3: "ssh -q -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no  [email protected] -i /home/homeassistant/.keys/ssh2rpi3 'sudo shutdown -h now'"

the “-o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no” isn’t really satisfying but in my case it was the only solution (maybe because of the VENV?)

The final automation:

  - id: record_camera_on_motion
    alias: record_camera_on_motion
    trigger:
      - platform: template
        value_template: "{{ is_state('binary_sensor.esp8266_02_pir', 'on') }}"
    condition:
      - condition: template
        value_template: "{{ not is_state('input_boolean.chrishome', 'on') }}"
    action:
      - service: switch.turn_on
        data:
          entity_id: switch.11011_c
      - service: shell_command.record_raspicam_minute
      - delay: 00:00:30
      - service: switch.turn_off
        data:
          entity_id: switch.11011_c
      - service: shell_command.record_raspicam_telegram
      - service: notify.telegram_christoph
        data_template:
          message: >
             {{ now().strftime('%d.%m.%Y %H:%M:%S') }} Motion was detected!
      - service: notify.telegram_christoph
        data:
          title: MotionCameraELW
          message: "Cat Cam"
          data:
            video:
              - file: /home/homeassistant/raspicam/raspicam_telegram.mp4
                caption: "Cat Cam"
      - delay: 00:01:00
      - service: shell_command.archive_raspicam_video

As soon as a the PIR on the shelf detects motion (and I am not home…) the following happens:

Turn on a Lamp (will be replaced with some IR LEDs (as soon as I’ll find them )
Use ffmpeg to dump the stream and save it as mkv
Turn off the Lamp
Convert the mkv stream dump to H264/MPEG4 (Telegram needs this format to autoplay the video)
Send the file with telegram
Archive the file

The commands for ffmpeg etc.:

shell_command:
#Image Processing
  record_raspicam_minute: ffmpeg -y -i tcp://192.168.0.26:9000 -an -c:v copy -t 00:00:30 /home/homeassistant/raspicam/raspicam.mkv
# H.264/MPEG4 to autoplay video in telegram
  record_raspicam_telegram: ffmpeg -y -i /home/homeassistant/raspicam/raspicam.mkv -an -c:v libx264 -crf 26 -vf scale=640:-1 -t 00:00:20 /home/homeassistant/raspicam/raspicam_telegram.mp4
  archive_raspicam_video: cp /home/homeassistant/raspicam/raspicam.mkv /home/homeassistant/raspicam/raspicam-{{ now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S") }}.mkv 

Link to the Files:
Package
Lovelace Card

Let me know what you think! =)

Telegram Screenshot:

Lovelace Card (without a cat )

Sample Videos:

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