Program/script launching keypad

1/08/2022

I have various cameras around inside/outside my house. Originally to view them I was displaying them on a 10 second rotation, however this gave me no control and often i'd find myself looking at something happening on a camera only for it to switch.

I have a keypad and arduino laying around so I thought it'd be neat to add in controls.
I have 5 cameras in this view (I have more inside my house in areas I don't want to always look at), so the keypad buttons 1-A will swap whichever camera is "minimised" to the main view. I use motion to manage and record my cameras, the minimised cameras are substreams, so use less bandwidth than the main view. Each camera is also capable of IR mode and switch when it gets dark. I also have IR floodlights on the outside of the house for bright night viewing (the cameras have IR LEDs as well, however outside it is nice to have more).

To listen via serial and actually execute programs/scripts, I wrote a C program. It connects over serial, receives the key pressed and takes action according to what is assigned to each key. The assignments are controlled via a .ini file, the key value can either be the word "cam" which means a camera command, or a program name/script that is to be executed. The program then forks off and exectutes whatever you desire. Camera commands are different - I use wServer as a very simple websocket server that accepts connections from a websocket client (the viewer), the server then sends the client whatever key I press if it is assigned as a camera command.
To view/control the cameras and receive commands I use a basic html/javascript pairing.


I also recently made a laptop vesa mount tray which I have my laptop sitting on now to save desk space. Commercial laptop tray offerings were all too thin to support my girthy x200 and ultrabase. Also I'm using my x200 tablet temporarily while I figure out issues with my plain x200's.