Witty pi energy manager software

[imvectech]

WHAT

Witty pi mini is a Uugear RPi shield capable of managing energy of the RPi together with keeping time using an embedded RTC.

https://github.com/uugear/Witty-Pi-2

We are working on a timelapse camera for river monitoring. The intention is to turn on the rpi 5 minutes every hour and take a picture. Simple as that. The Witty pi controls the On/OFF of the RPi sending zero voltage to the Pi to fully turn it off. After 55 minutes the Witty sends a electrical signal and the Pi boots up.

We've already done this using raspbian and want to use the PL camera kit instead ;D

In the recipe we also include a pythin script for the timelapse and some packages needed.

Download instructions

Generating the image will take a few minutes. Once the image is prepared, and if it succeeded, you'll see a green checkmark at the bottom of the pull request. To download the image:

1. click the green checkmark; you'll go to a page at a URL like https://gitlab.com/publiclab/image-builder-rpi/pipelines/########/builds
2. On this page, click the Jobs tab, next to Pipeline
3. Click the green Passed button
4. Click Download in the right-hand sidebar
5. Unzip the artifacts.zip file, and also the hypriotos-rpi-camera_web.img.zip within it
6. Use a program like https://etcher.io/ to flash it to an SD card

You'll also be able to read the output of the image generation in this window.

We hope to create a bot to report back the completed image URL in each pull request. If you can help create such a bot, please contact us at:

#16

Thanks!

[imvectech]

Picture of the camera over the Anoia River near Barcelona.

[jywarren]

Hmm, @icarito is it just taking a while for the GitLab process to begin?

Exciting!!! :-)

I wonder if this would make the Pi last a lot longer using one of these little batteries :-) https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=cr123a 🔋 ⚡️ 😴

[imvectech]

Is it possible that importing those files to github simplifies the hole thing?
We are using the Witty to turn the camera off for 55 minutes. I suppose depending on the project, for sure the board will help making those batteries last longer ;D

[jywarren]

importing those files

which files?

Oh wow i like this approach too! Ideally we can get not only this but also the entire timelapse system running from a prebuilt image.

[imvectech]

the script incorporates the execution of the installWittiPi.sh script to install the witty software + download of the schedule.wpi file and the erase of the original daemon.sh and donwload of a modified one. There is an issue with witty pi and GPIO4 solved changing just a number.
After having the witty working this python script is executed on boot to take the picture. Waits 6 minutes and before next picture the witty turns the hole system down. Route of the pictures shoud be changed as it's from our raspbian tests.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import time
from picamera import PiCamera
from datetime import datetime
from time import sleep
from signal import pause

camera = PiCamera()

frame = 1
while True:
try:
datetime = datetime.now()
camera.resolution = (2592, 1944)
camera.capture('/home/pi/Pictures/%s.jpg' % datetime)
frame = 1
sleep(360)
except IOError:
print ("Error")

pause()

[imvectech]

Sorry for the third commit. I didn't intend to merge branch witty into patch-1 but the opposite ;D

[icarito]

I'm guessing PR into master are built automatically by GitLab?
e.g. https://gitlab.com/publiclab/pi-builder/-/jobs/115498371

[jywarren]

Ah ok, so @imvectech you just have to open the PR against the master branch instead of the witty branch! Or I could merge it and reopen the witty pr?

[imvectech]

ok closing here and opening a new one. This is being a 100%git learning process. I'll try to install the Witty pi and try our approach with the timelapse already provided ;)

New PR #47

[jywarren]

Awesome and thanks for giving it a try!!!

…

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