Pilapse - Raspberry Pi Camera and Timelapse

It is a simple python script to capture timelapse with few more addition option than raspistill -tl.

Built-in command usage: raspistill -t 30000 -tl 2000 -o image%04d.jpg

I wrote pilapse.py because I need to manage the quality -q and W x H which -tl flag does not support. Along with configurable delay between each pictures and when to stop based on available freespace on disk.

Find my first successful timelapse using this script below. Sorry for the orientation.

thumbnail of video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X7YW2372Qk
thumbnail of video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzTujxJvKDo

Hardware used:

Stiching timelapse video:

Files were later copied to a mac, batch renamed later as

And used the following command to convert to video

avconv -r 10 -i image%d.jpg -r 10 -vcodec libx264 -vf scale=1440:1080 timelapse.mp4

Note: While renaming be aware of natural order sorting (ref). Finder batch rename messed few times, so always check the images are in correct sequence.

Script: pilapse.py

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import time
import subprocess
from time import sleep
import random


# Configuration 

sleepDurationInSeconds = 15
checkDiskSpaceEveryImage = 20

rand = random.randint(0,10000)
# "echo \"SEQ-$RANDOM-$(ls | wc -l)-\""
numFiles = subprocess.check_output("echo $(ls | wc -l)", shell=True)


randPrefix = "SEQ-"+str(rand)+"-"+str(numFiles).strip()


imgSeq = 0
shouldAbort = False

print "Timelapse started. Capture image every "+str(sleepDurationInSeconds)+" sec. Check Free Space every "+str(checkDiskSpaceEveryImage)+" images."

while (shouldAbort != True):
    # Every x seconds
    sleep(sleepDurationInSeconds)
    ts = time.strftime("%Y%m%d%H%M%S")
    imgName = randPrefix+"-"+str(imgSeq)+"-"+ts
    print imgName

    os.system("raspistill -t 2000 -n -q 100 -vf -hf -w 1440 -h 1080 -o "+imgName+".jpg")

    imgSeq += 1
    # Quit after x images
    # if (imgSeq > 10):
    #     shouldAbort = True


    # Check freespace every x seconds
    if (imgSeq % checkDiskSpaceEveryImage == 0):
        dfOut = subprocess.check_output("df | grep root| awk '{print $4}'", shell=True)
        freespace = int(dfOut.strip())
        # less than 1G
        if (freespace < 1000000):
            print "Low on space, exiting timelapse"
            shouldAbort = True

print "Timelapse completed."

Latest version of the script can be found at https://gist.github.com/palaniraja/a0ee100dec5a7dbd6a704c51adb96ba2

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