When you want something a little simpler and more lightweight than Zoneminder for operating surveillance cameras, try Motion.
Motion is a nice lightweight, yet capable application for operating surveillance cameras on Linux. It works with any Linux-supported video camera, including all V4L Webcams, many IP cameras, Axis cameras, and it controls pan and tilt functions. Motion records movies and snapshots in JPEG, PPM, and MPEG formats, and you can view these remotely in a Web browser thanks to Motion’s built-in HTTP server. It stores image files in a directory of your choosing, and it does not require a database, though it supports MySQL and PostgreSQL if you do want to use one.
There are many LEGAL uses of Torrent protocol, and many people use VPN’S to seek to block their IP addresses. Some are faster, easier to operate, log less, allow more devices to use the software, have live chat support, better features, lower monthly price. Motion to dismiss in Torrent illegal movie download case. Router Port Forwarding is a very powerful port forwarding and port triggering software for router. You can easily add, delete, view port forwarding entry of router. The tool can detect multiple routers on your network. Port triggering function is supported too. At the same time, you can use port check function to check if your port is opened.
First let’s look at how to get an IP camera working with Motion using my trusty Foscam FI8905W (figure 1), and then we’ll add a USB Webcam.
Installation is easy on Debian and Debian derivatives, because Motion is included in the standard software repositories. So all you need to do is run apt-get install motion. You also need libav-tools, which is a fork of ffmpeg. Many moons ago, Debian dropped ffmpeg and replaced it with libav-tools (See Is FFmpeg missing from the official repositories in 14.04? to learn the gory details, and how to get ffmpeg itself if that’s what you really want). On other distros, check the downloads page and installation guide for instructions. Most other distros still include ffmpeg.
The installer should create a motion group and user, and add the motion user to the video group. If it doesn’t, then you must create them yourself. Add yourself to the video group as well, to get around permissions hassles.
Now run motion to see if it works:
It will go on for many more lines, until you see:
Point your Web browser to localhost:8081 and you will see a gray image:
This is good, as it means Motion is installed correctly, and all you have to do is configure it. Press Ctrl+C to stop it. Then create a .motion directory in your home directory, copy the default configuration file into it, and change ownership to you:
You also need a directory to store images captured by motion:
When you start Motion it looks for a configuration file in the current directory, then in ~/.motion, and finally /etc/motion. Now edit your ~/.motion/motion.conf file– this example includes basic configurations, and the lines relevant to my Foscam IP camera:
You need to create the directory for storing the PID file, as it says in motion.conf:
Now try starting it up again:
Good so far, now try localhost:8081 again:
Well look, there is my driveway. Now I will have plenty of warning when visitors come, so I can loose the moat monsters. Run around in front of your camera to trigger motion detection, and when you come back your images directory should have some .avi movies in it. You should also find a simple Motion control panel at localhost:8080.
IP Camera Settings
How to Operate Your Spycams with ZoneMinder on Linux (part 1) goes into some detail on setting up your camera. You must follow the vendor’s instructions for the initial setup, such as assigning a login and password, and setting the IP address. You may have other options as well, such as frame size, motion sensitivity, and color depth or black and white.
Getting the correct netcam_url is sometimes a hassle. For my Foscam I brought up its control panel in Firefox, right-clicked on the image (figure 4), then left-clicked View Image Info. This opens a screen like figure 5, which shows the exact URL of the videostream. In the Chrome browser use “Inspect element.”
Fine-tuning Configuration Values
You can make all kinds of adjustments in your configuration file such as image size, image quality, frame rate, sensitivity to movement, greater sensitivity in selected areas of the frame, file paths, HTTP server settings, and time stamp formats. Motion Guide – Alphabetical Option Reference Manual gives detailed information on each option. Remember to harmonize your Motion settings with the settings in your camera’s control panel, if it has one.
USB Cameras
Any V4l-supported USB Webcam should work with little fuss. The video device will be /dev/video0. /dev/video0 will be present only when a video camera is connected directory to your computer. This is a basic example configuration for my Logitech Webcam:
And again, remember that settings such as frame rate and size are dependent on what your camera supports.
Daemonizing Motion
Once you have everything working, make Motion run as a daemon by editing /etc/default/motion, and changing start_motion_daemon=no to start_motion_daemon=yes. Now Motion will start automatically when you start your computer, and you can start and stop it like any other daemon.
Controlling Multiple Cameras
Motion manages multiple cameras with ease — all you do is give each camera its own configuration file, named thread1.conf, thread1.conf, and so on. You still need your main motion.conf for common options such as daemon on and filepaths. Then each “thread” file has configurations specific to each camera.
A free torrent client can be a game-changer, making downloads faster and more secure. Gone are the days when torrents were associated solely with piracy, and if you want to take advantage of the fast download speeds that torrenting offers, you're going to need the right software.
Torrenting is ideal for those occasions when you need to download a very large file. It might be a video file, or it could be a large piece of software, but if you download in the traditional way – direct from a host server – you're likely to find that it is a slow experience, particularly if other people are trying to grab the same file.
With torrents, however, you can download pieces of the files you want from different people who already have them. A free torrent client will do all the hard work for you, downloading and piecing together the files, you just need to pick the one that does everything you need it to.
Download Torrents
That's why we've put together this roundup so you can select the best free torrent client for your needs while avoiding the once that are simply no good. Whether you need something simple that just gets the job done, or something more advanced that can be extended through the use of add-ons, there's something or you here.
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Are torrents legal?
Torrents have a bad reputation due to piracy, but they aren't illegal in themselves and have lots of legitimate uses, including downloading open source software and material that's in the public domain.
It all depends on the content you're downloading. Provided the copyright holder has given permission for the file to be shared this way it's fine, but using torrents to download content you'd otherwise have to pay for is not legal.