Brian J Lee, created March 2017.
Easy Forward is an Internet of Things(IoT) platform for Time lapse photography, built using Tessel 2 development board Raspberry Pi and incorporating Socket.io, ImageMagic and Express.js.
Authorized and authenticated users can control the camera from anywhere without having to worry about network location—the only requirements are electricity and a stable Internet connection.
Frontend site, which serves as the main access point for controlling the devices as well as viewing and publishing images, is built using Angular 2.4 with TypeScript.
This project requires a development board to serve as the remote device. For best performance, use a Raspberry Pi running the latest version of Raspian OS and the RPi camera module. Otherwise, most development boards capable of installing and running Node.js will work with small adjustments to the code.
If using a setup other than Raspberry Pi with the native camera module, a UVC webcam with the appropriate interface for connecting with the development board is required.
All systems will require either sufficient internal memory space or external storage device such as a USB flash drive or an external hard disk.
Install Node.js ImageMagick and PostgreSQL. All are available on Homebrew for MacOS.
Run yarn or npm install to install dependencies. Run yarnpkg knex migrate:latest (or npm run knex migrate:latest) and yarnpkg knex seed:run (or npm run knex seed:run) to initialize database.
Start development server with yarnpkg start or npm start. http://localhost:4200 proxies to backend running on http://localhost:3000 by default.
Initialize device by installing appropriate OS. Code was developed for Raspbian linux but any linux derived distributions should work as long as it can install and run Node.js.
Following the installation of a suitable OS, install the program dependencies. The program requires Node.js and raspistill. raspistill is likely to be installed with the OS.
To run, navigate to the Raspberry Pi's project directory and run curl -fsSL 'http://www.easy-fwd.com/tools/install?board=pi' | sh. The program will run automatically following installation.
To restart the program after a reboot, navigate to the project directory and run node index.js.
Initialize Tessel 2 and T2-CLI.
To run, navigate to your computer's project directory and run curl -fsSL 'http://www.easy-fwd.com/tools/install?board=t2' | sh. The Tessel 2 must be authorized with this computer in order to run the program.
Follow instructions for deploying code to your device. The code from T2 can be reused after adjustments to NPM io packages and Johnny Five settings.
Initialize devices using installation instructions above. The devices require a USB flashdrive for local storage, a camera component (e.g. UVC enabled webcam) and connection to power supply such as an external battery pack or AC adapter.
While not strictly necessary, a tripod to stabilize the camera module/webcam is strongly recommended.
Main page, regardless of authentication status, is the gallery with card display preview images of the published works.
To register and connect with the device, user registration and authentication is required.
Users can add new devices using a unique identifier for the boards. For Raspberry Pi, this is the serial number that gets logged in the console during each initialization. For Tessel 2, this is the MAC address used by the onboard WiFi adapter.
It is also recommended that users give human-friendly nicknames to refer to the devices.
Select the device to record in the device overview page. Using the preview image, calibrate the camera orientation.
Once ready, fill in the time settings and submit. Page will be redirected to the device overview where the device status has now been updated.
Ongoing projects is displayed in the project dashboard with the last uploaded image.
Completed recordings are listed in the dashboard. Clicking on the 'Edit & Publish' button will redirect to project details page.
Users may view individual frames recorded during the process.
After selecting the framerate of the gif and the title, click publish. Once ready, the page will redirect to image.
- Angular2 with TypeScript and RxJS
- Angular CLI
- Bootstrap 4.0.0 with ng-bootstrap
- PostgreSQL with Knex
- Hardware: Raspberry Pi or Tessel 2
- Software: Node.js, Johnny-Five optional
- Improve styling
- Improve device stability
- Meta tags (service incorporated in Angular 4.0.0, consider migrating once dependencies catch up!)
- NativeScript
- Stepper motor
- re-write test files