motion2telegram

Motion is a program that monitors the video signal from one or more cameras and is able to detect if a significant part of the picture has changed. I.e., it can detect motion.

Setup a Raspberry Pi with motion2telegram to

• send a picture to a Telegram user/group if motion is detected
• activate/deactivate motion detection by scanning for the prescence of your mobile phone(s) using bluetooth

Use motion2telegram to apply a pre-configured set of motion and systemd service configuration files and Python scripts to setup your Raspberry Pi.

Stack

• Raspberry Pi
  • 1 B+
  • 4 B
  • Zero W V1.1
• Raspberry Pi OS
  • Lite (32-bit) (Port of Debian Bookworm)
  • Lite (64-bit)
• Python 3.11.2
• Motion 4.5.1
• Logitech C270 HD WEBCAM

Prerequisites

• A Raspberry Pi setup with a working network configuration and connected to the internet
• The Linux BlueZ Bluetooth stack
  • Installed by default in the latest Raspberry Pi OS
• Motion installed
• A Telegram account
• A Telegram bot token
• The bluetooth MAC address(es) of your mobile phone(s)
• Bluetooth enabled on your mobile phone(s)
• A user on Raspberry Pi OS to run the motion service. motion2telegram installation and motion service configuration is done in the context of this user. The user MUST be a member of the groups motion and video
• A Python virtual environment

Install with pip

Login with the user created to run the motion service. Create a directory, e.g. motion2telegram, and cd into it. From here on, you'll work in this directory. Create and activate a Python virtual environment and then

(venv) $ pip install motion2telegram
...
# Verify by version
(venv) $ motion2telegram -V
x.y.z
(venv) $

Configuration

Create a motion.env file with the following command.

(venv) $ motion2telegram --init

This file is used by

• the motion service to retrieve
  • the Telegram bot token and
  • the recipient's chat id.
• the mobile phone scanner to retrieve
  • bluetooth MAC address(es) and
  • the scan interval

Specify your Telegram chat id and bot token in the file motion.env

# motion.env
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=

Specify the bluetooth MAC address(es) and time between scans in motion.env

BLUETOOTH_ADDRESSES_PHONES=
MOBILE_PHONE_SCAN_INTERVAL=300

Configure motion with

(venv) $ motion2telegram --configure

This will install preconfigured files using the environment variables set in motion.env and references to Python scripts to run.

• /etc/motion/motion.conf
• /lib/systemd/system/motion.service. and
• /lib/systemd/system/mobile_phone_scan.service

Motion is configured to write

• logs into log/motion.log and
• media files into media/YYYYMMDD

relative to the current directory. Media captured on the same date are grouped together in a YYYYMMDD directory.

The motion and mobile_phone_scan systemd services will reference the motion.env file in the current directory for the chat id, bot token, bluetooth MAC address(es) and scan interval. The command will stop, configure and bring the motion and mobile_phone_scan service back up. If you need it, motion's process-id is written to motion.pid in the directory you installed motion2telegram.

Reference

• Motion
• Telegram