How could a press of my house's doorbell send a snapshot from my porch webcam?

[someguy]

I have a Foscam R2 webcam that monitors my porch.  It has a function to send an image on motion.  The problem is that this sends way too many images.  I've tried toying with the area of detection and the sensitivity to no avail.  For security, I have it send all of those images to an email account that I don't use often so that they are there if I need them but what I'd like to do is to be able to have it send a single snapshot when someone presses the doorbell.  I could have this sent as a text to my phone.  Yes, there are doorbells out there (like the one called "ring") that do this exact thing, but I already have the webcam and I already have my doorbell connected to my ISY that sends an text to myself and my wife when someone rings to doorbell.  It would be great if that text also included a snapshot of the person at the door.

 

Any suggestions?  (I might add that some of the older Foscam units have a URL that will fetch an image from the camera, but the R2 model doesn't have this capability.)  

 

[MWareman]

I hooked a dpdt relay (with a 24vac coil) up to my bell push (so the bell push switches the relay on and off instead of ringing the bell). I then wired one pole of the relay as if it were the bell push to ring the bell - all from the bells native 24vac transformer. This gives normal bell functionality and an extra dry contact.

 

I took the second pole of the relay and wired it to an iolinc.

 

The iolinc triggers a program on ISY that makes a network call to a Ubuntu host I have running a php script.

 

The php script gets the current image from the camera, saves it with a guid based name into a folder that’s within the Apache published root. The PHP then sends a pushover notification with a link to the image.

 

Somewhat convoluted, but it’s worked for me for a couple of years now. I have a secondary trigger driven from an Insteon motion sensor in the porch...

[chrishick]

I've done something similar to MWareman. The doorbell push button is connected directly to an IOlinc, there is no actual doorbell. I have a RPi with Kodi that plays an MP3 file via a network resource for notification (it currently says "Ding dong. Somebody is at the front door"). I also have a windows PC running Blue Iris that will text me a picture of the front door via another network resource on the ISY.

 

The only problem I'm having is that when i trigger the program manually on the ISY I get the notification on my phone via pushover with the text picture from Blue Iris, but when somebody actually rings the doorbell I don't get the photo. I'm still trying to figure that one out........

[KeviNH]

Most solutions need a URL that will fetch an image from the camera.   They also require a computer that is always on, be it an Ubuntu host, Blue Iris, rPi, etc.

 

You could leave motion turned off on the Foscam, and then use a network resource like this to enable it when somebody is at the door:

http://xxxxxx.xxx:00/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=setMotionDetectConfig1&isEnable=1&linkage=14&snapInterval=2&triggerInterval=6&isMovAlarmEnable=1&isPirAlarmEnable=1&schedule0=281474976710655&schedule1=281474976710655&schedule2=281474976710655&schedule3=281474976710655&schedule4=281474976710655&schedule5=281474976710655&schedule6=281474976710655&x1=56y1=103&width1=10000&height1=10000&sensitivity1=0&valid1=1&x2=0&y2=0&width2=0&height2=0&sensitivity2=2&valid2=0&x3=0&y3=0&width3=0&height3=0&sensitivity3=3&valid3=0&x4=0y4=0&width4=0&height4=0&sensitivity4=3&valid4=0&usr=admin&pwd=*****

The Foscam R2 is kind of buggy, it's an Amba S2L with some slightly modified commands not exactly supporting the standard Foscam APIs.

 

In theory you could do /cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=setSMTPConfig&receiver=... to override the email desitnation temporarily to add your email address to the email destination (by putting a , in between) and then a few minutes later, remove the extra email address from the list of destinations.   But I don't have a Foscam any more, so can't say for sure.

[someguy]

Most solutions need a URL that will fetch an image from the camera.   They also require a computer that is always on, be it an Ubuntu host, Blue Iris, rPi, etc.

 

You could leave motion turned off on the Foscam, and then use a network resource like this to enable it when somebody is at the door:

http://xxxxxx.xxx:00/cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=setMotionDetectConfig1&isEnable=1&linkage=14&snapInterval=2&triggerInterval=6&isMovAlarmEnable=1&isPirAlarmEnable=1&schedule0=281474976710655&schedule1=281474976710655&schedule2=281474976710655&schedule3=281474976710655&schedule4=281474976710655&schedule5=281474976710655&schedule6=281474976710655&x1=56y1=103&width1=10000&height1=10000&sensitivity1=0&valid1=1&x2=0&y2=0&width2=0&height2=0&sensitivity2=2&valid2=0&x3=0&y3=0&width3=0&height3=0&sensitivity3=3&valid3=0&x4=0y4=0&width4=0&height4=0&sensitivity4=3&valid4=0&usr=admin&pwd=*****

The Foscam R2 is kind of buggy, it's an Amba S2L with some slightly modified commands not exactly supporting the standard Foscam APIs.

 

In theory you could do /cgi-bin/CGIProxy.fcgi?cmd=setSMTPConfig&receiver=... to override the email desitnation temporarily to add your email address to the email destination (by putting a , in between) and then a few minutes later, remove the extra email address from the list of destinations.   But I don't have a Foscam any more, so can't say for sure.

On that long URL, will you help me dumb this down a bit?

 

If I replace the xxxxxxxx.xxx:00 with my camera's IP address and then replace the "admin" with my camera's username and replace the "pwd" with my camera's password, it may somehow fetch a picture?  If so, what will that URL do with the picture?

 

when I tried this, the web browser replied with this:

 

 

<CGI_Result>

<result>-2</result>

</CGI_Result>

[KeviNH]

I don't know if the Foscam R2 offers a URL that will fetch an image from the camera-- documentation is poor at best.

 

Even with a URL that returns a snapshot, you can't just call snapshot.cgi from a Network Resource, as ISY994 doesn't support reading the binary response from the camera (a large .JPG file) in reply to a Network Resource nor can ISY994 email it to you -- there needs to be an always on computer/rPi/etc to handle reading in the picture and sending out the email.

 

 

On that long URL, will you help me dumb this down a bit? If I replace the xxxxxxxx.xxx:00 with my camera's IP address and then replace the "admin" with my camera's username and replace the "pwd" with my camera's password, it may somehow fetch a picture?  If so, what will that URL do with the picture?

All that giant URL does is turn on the motion detection feature of the Foscam.  You could use another giant URL to turn it off again.