webcamd 1.0.1

A minimalist service for streaming a webcam over HLS

OctoPrint Stuff

This is a collection of bits and bobs that make running Octoprint a tad easier.

The most notable component is webcamd which is a minimalist drop-in replacement for mjpeg_streamer.

• Octoprint appends a seemingly-random session ID to the camera URI, which confuses the hell out of mjpg-streamer
• mjpg-streamer doesn't appear to be capable of handle multiple simultaneous streams, resulting in the infuriating 403: Forbidden! frame already sent error
• mjpg-streamer itself is complete overkill here

webcamd is based on Igor Maculan’s “Simple Python Motion Jpeg” daemon. It has been reworked to run under python-3.x, accept command-line arguments, to fine-tune the webcam streaming experience.

Note!

The user running webcamd must have sufficient access to the webcam device. On most Linux systems, this is as simple as adding the user to the video group. Otherwise the daemon will have to be run as root, which is NOT recommended.

webcam@.service is a systemd unit file for webcam.py.

haproxy.cfg is a configuration file for haproxy that actually works with non-ancient versions of haproxy, and enforces SSL connections to Octoprint.

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webcamd Quickstart

Install Locally

$ pip install .

Run the module directly

$ python3 -m webcamd

Help and Usage

$ webcamd --help

Create a SystemD Service

Open the following file and copy these contents:

/etc/systemd/system/webcamd.service
___________________________________
[Unit]
Description=Webcam Daemon. A minimalist webcam streaming service.
After=network.online.target
Wants=network.online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=octoprint
Group=octoprint
ExecStart=/usr/bin/webcamd
ExecStop=killall -u webcam webcamd

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then restart the systemd daemon loader:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

And enable the service, to allow the service to start automatically on boot:

$ sudo systemctl enable webcamd.service

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Development

Install Locally with dev dependencies

$ pip install -e .[dev]