Foscam Archiver (for home NAS servers/appliances, or Windows)

Automatically collect/backup from Foscam SD-card storage to most NAS setups

The problem

To my knowledge, most (all?) modern Foscams have a built-in ftp-upload feature that one can use to point to an ftp server running on their home NAS... but this option has an unavoidable failing: uploaded videos have no audio!! (Why!?!!?)

The motivation

If, instead, your camera is configured to save media to a removeable SD-card, these files do have audio. Physically removing the SD-card is an unacceptable pain, but it IS possible to access its contents over your home network! (well, probably. I can't speak for all camera models.)

As one example, the Foscam C1, has a quasi-secret built-in FTP server we can use. (Note this is entirely different from the ftp-upload client feature.) This feature is exposed when you "manage" your SD Card from the C1's webgui: [webgui:88] > Settings tab (on top) > Record tab (on left) > SD Card Management > "SD Card Management" button. This button silently starts the camera's FTP server, then opens a Windows Explorer FTP-browser URL to port 50021 of your camera.

Using this, we can automate the archiving process using some basic unix/linux tools. Thus, I'm choosing to call this whole thing a (quasi-) "service", for simplicity. And this being said, this project is more of a how-to with guided examples than anything else.

Tools involved

• your NAS/computer to store the media and run the "service"
• the "Chocolatey" package manager, IF running the service on a Windows box
• the "Lftp" binary to manage the mirroring operation
• the "curl" binary to send the start-ftp command
• one or two scripts to config/run these binaries
• crontab (or your NAS's built in task scheduler) to regularly grab new files

Installation

Installing these tools on FreeNAS / in a FreeNAS jail

I prefer to install non-server-essential junk outside the main OS, in a jail, but you don't have to. Doing so with a jail will definitely require you install some things manually so it's a better instructional starting point:

• Open a jail console (if using a jail) or SSH shell
  • use sudo prefixing if you aren't root
  • pkg update to update the FreeBSD repository catalogue
  • pkg install curl to install curl (used to start an unstarted FTP server on the foscam)
  • pkg install lftp to install lftp (which will manage all mirroring)
• choose/prepare your script(s)
  • you can use a shell script that includes an LFTP command, or...
  • use just an LFTP script

Installing the tools on Windows

There's other ways to run Lftp on Windows, but I prefer using Chocolatey to sort of emulate the pkg/apt-get package managers since it's quick and easy. Chocolatey runs a quasi-hidden Cygwin environment in the background and installs .exe "shims" that communicate with the hidden environment.

• open an administrator command shell (aka run-as-administrator on cmd.exe)
• install Chocolatey via copy/paste/execute of the install command (https://chocolatey.org/install)

  • Currently:

    @"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
    

  • You should see progress text, but not errors.

  • If you see no text at all, try restarting your computer -- .net might have crashed

• install curl and Lftp using chocolatey (in that same administrator shell)
  • choco install curl to install curl (used to start an unstarted FTP server on the foscam)
  • choco install lftp to install lftp (which will manage all mirroring)
• choose/prepare your script(s)
  • you can use a shell script that includes an LFTP command, or...
  • use just an LFTP script

Usage/Scheduling

Scheduling automatic runs on FreeNAS / in a FreeNAS jail

• schedule a task trigger
  • use crontab inside a jail, or...
  • use FreeNAS's scheduler if you didn't use a jail, or...
  • use FreeNAS's scheduler to send an SSH command to the jail (requires your jail also have SSH access conf'd)
• set your task action
  • point it directly at (an executable) shell script: e.g.: /PATH/TO/sync_foscams_simple.sh, or...
  • point it at the Lftp binary and use the -f flag: e.g. /PATH/TO/lftp -f /PATH/TO/sync_foscams_noshell.lftp

Scheduling automatic runs on Windows

• schedule a task trigger
  • find the "Task Scheduler" app by searching via the Start menu
  • choose "Create Basic Task" from the Actions section on the right side of the window
  • give it a name and choose the date/time frequency for triggering it
• set your task action
  • choose to "Start a program"
  • point the "Program/script" box at the Lftp binary: e.g. lftp.exe or C:\PATH\TO\lftp.exe
  • set the "Add arguments" box to -f /cygdrive/C/PATH/TO/sync_foscams_noshell.lftp
  • NOTE: in the arguments box, the standard windows "c:\whatever" syntax is replaced by "/cygdrive/c/whatever" with slashes reversed to make the Cygwin environment happy

Create daily digest of combined recordings using Summarizer

What it does

The summarizer script

• gathers the files under every "YYYYMMDD/YYYYMMDD_hhmmss" directory (created for first video of the day or first recording after a reboot)
• sorts them by record-time alone, so SDalarm, MDalarm, and Scheduled files aren't grouped
• and losslessly combines them using ffmpeg. (i.e. you'd have to also install ffmpeg using "pkg install ffmpeg"/etc)

It's written in Bourne shell so isn't windows-box ready.

Modifying for your purposes

In its current form, the ffmpeg string strips the audio out and losslessly combines to a file with size equal to the video streams of all included clips. This could easily be changed to suit individual purposes. E.g.:

• re-encode at smaller dimensions
• re-encode using "time lapse"
• re-encode any/all of the above in addition to a lossless digest
• etc, etc

Ffmpeg has a daunting number of options, so I eventually plan to include some "uncomment to x/y/z" flags for common operations.