Page 7 - Newsletter_September_2026

With two cameras broadcasting over the local network, you could have any number of systems ‘reading this
stream’ and processing it differently

With two cameras broadcasting over the local network, you could have any number of systems ‘reading this
stream’ and processing it differently.
These 5 progs could have been written as one program with multiple threads – but why do that when the OS
can handle running 5 progs with ease.
Two programs check the cameras ‘all the time’ and detect differences – these are recorded in two places. In
‘todays’ folder and in the OutBox Folder.
Today’s folder contains all the images that the system thought were ‘different’ to the previous image.

The program that sends the emails, polls the outbox folder on a regular basis and decides what to send via
email.
All the programs read a configuration file to determine various characteristics and this config file can be
changed by anyone send an appropriately formatted email to the system – the config file is changed and the
system rebooted.
For some reason I cannot get this PI to auto reboot – so I wrote a program to do it. This reboot also clears out
old images and log files and deletes the emails that have been sent – so it keeps the system ‘clean’.