PrusaConnectPiCam

Setup a PiCam to connect to PrusaConnect via python

Setup

1. Go to your PrusaConnect Dashboard and click on the "Camera" tab
   

2. Scroll down to the "Other cameras" section and click "Add new other camera"
   

3. Connect to your pi, clone the git repo and go into the new created folder

   sudo apt install git
   git clone https://github.com/postpapa/PrusaConnectPiCam
   cd PrusaConnectPiCam
   

4. run the setup.py and enter the requested infos
   python3 setup.py

   4.1 Enter the token. You can find the token below the name of your "Other camera"
   
   4.2 Enter an alternative name for your "Other camera"
   4.3 If everything went well you should see "Request was successful." in the terminal
   4.3.1 You may need to install pip3 and requests lib

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install python3-pip
   sudo pip3 install requests
   sudo pip3 install picamera
   

5. Check on the PrusaConnect site if the name of your "Other camera" was changed and the status changed to "Registered"
   

6. run the "sendscreenshots.py" script to test the uploading part. after a while you should see an image on your PrusaConnect Camera tab
   python3 sendscreenshot.py

   ctrl + c to exit the script

Install sendscreenshot.py as a service to run it in the background

1. Make sendscreenshot.py executeable
   chmod +x sendscreenshot.py

2. create the service file and insert the following code
   sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/sendscreenshot.service

   [Unit]
   Description=Uploads images to prusacloud
   After=networking.service
   
   [Service]
   ExecStart=/home/pi/PrusaConnectPiCam/sendscreenshot.py
   WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/PrusaConnectPiCam
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=5
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

   2.1 Adjust the ExecStart and WorkingDirectory as needed. You can get the current directory if you enter pwd in the terminal
   2.2 press ctrl + x followed by y to save the file

3. You can now start/stop the service with the following commands

   sudo systemctl start sendscreenshot.service
   sudo systemctl stop sendscreenshot.service
   

Optional

If you want that the service starts automatically after the pi rebootet type the following line into the terminal
sudo systemctl enable sendscreenshot.service