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I've just discovered Motion and it works like a charm.. My only problem is that I'd like it to be active only during night-time, but there's no parameter for scheduling..

I think I could write a program that would control Motion via its "HTTP API", but I was wondering if someone had already done that, or if there's an alternative solution.

Thanks in advance :)

fixer1234
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Joril
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2 Answers2

6

For this simple task, Motion's HTTP API can be used directly with wget or similar..
Straight from the FAQ:

0 9 * * * root /usr/bin/lwp-request http://localhost:8080/0/detection/start > /dev/null 
0 18 * * * root /usr/bin/lwp-request http://localhost:8080/0/detection/pause > /dev/null
endolith
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Joril
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2

Use cron:

crontab -e

then put in it:

DISPLAY=:0.0
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/motion 
0 8 * * * /usr/bin/killall motion

I'm assuming that you want to open "motion" at midnight everyday, and that motion path is /usr/bin/motion: custom this crontab to your needs and it'll do the trick.

endolith
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dag729
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