Bubba

Bubba is an API to control the sending of motion alerts for IP cameras and displaying weather on screen. This program uses a leaky bucket alogrithim to reduce the noise from constant motion.

I wrote this as a solution to prevent my phone from exploding with alerts when I was mowing the yard. Dropcam uses a simple 30-minute cooldown on push alerts, but I wanted something that gave me a little more control over how alerts are sent.

Bubba utilizes Pushover and Wunderground for alerting and weather data respectively. Weather data is currently updated on screen every 10 minutes.

Future Functionality:

• Change camera settings based on time of day.
• Combine wind data with motion alert requests to filter out wind-induced motion alerts.

Configuration

Config.yaml

Config.yaml contains common configuration settings for customizing Bubba.

Key	Description
credit_full	The maximum number of alert credits a camera can hold.
credit_interval	The number of seconds before a camera will gain credit.
credit_increment	The number of credits granted at the credit_interval
name	Camera name.
hostname	Camera hostname or IP. Used to make API calls.
zip	Location of camera. Used for weather.
state	Location of camera. Used for weather.
no_osd	If this is true then Bubba will not try to update on-screen-display. Currently Bubba only supports OSD Hikvision cameras. Setting this to true will prevent issues when using a non Hikvision camera.

Environment Variables

The following environment variables need to be exported before starting Bubba.

Variable	Details
pushover_app_key	Pushover application key. Create app.
pushover_user_key	Pushover user key. View key (requires login).
wunderground_key	Your wunderground API key. Get an API key.
hikvision_username	Hikvision web interface.
hikvision_password	Hikvision web interface.

Run with Docker

Docker is the preferred method for deplying Bubba. Replace sample key data with your own.

#!/bin/bash
docker build -t bubba .
docker rm -f bubba
docker run \
  --name="bubba" \
  --publish=4567:4567 \
  --env pushover_app_key='bK2YEgZay8ThNGMUm57aQmNnYfx2y3' \
  --env pushover_user_key='CeRe3B7Gt75uTUJVvBfD8JZKSteafz' \
  --env wunderground_key='5335cf7b87ef8286' \
  --env hikvision_username='admin' \
  --env hikvision_password='password' \
  --restart="always" \
  --detach=true \
  bubba

Leaky Bucket Credits

All cameras start with, and have a maximum of, 3 credits. Sending a push alert consumes one credit. Each camera gets 1 credit every 20 minutes. When a camera is out of credits it will not send push alerts until it receives more credits. All of these values can be configured in config.yaml

Endpoints

• GET /camera/:camera_name/motion - triggers an alert if there is credit.
• GET /camera/:camera_name/info - Shows credits.
• POST /camera/:camera_name/environment - updates temperature and wind. Bubba automatically updates every 10 minutes otherwise.