README

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thwarted/sets/72157623777255069/

https://github.com/thwarted/picsofourlives

These scripts take pictures from your webcam when certain events are detected.

Requirements:
  bash
  mplayer
  a working v4l2 compatible webcam (test with the bin/cam-view script)

Optional:
  netpbm (to work around camera warmup time)


There are scripts to detect different actions:

  bin/watch-for-screensaver
    if you use xscreensaver, this will take a picture at some random time
    within a minute after the screensaver is deactivated.  This way it almost
    guarantees that you'll be at the computer when a picture is taken.

  bin/watch-for-gnome-screensaver
    integrates with dbus to receive events from gnome-screensaver, same as
    above.

  bin/watch-for-quake
    this script attempts to take a picture every five minutes if it sees a
    connection in netstat to quakelive.com's XMPP server.  This XMPP
    connection seems to be active all the time when quakelive is running.
    I'm trying to see if I can capture any good facial expressions while I'm
    playing (all I've found so far is that I barely move and am always in the
    same position when playing).

You can put more scripts in bin named watch-for-foo and they will be started
by the control script.  Send me additional scripts for other events; pull
requests on github are welcome.



Control with
    ctlwatchers start
    ctlwatchers stop
    ctlwatchers status
    ctlwatchers restart
    ctlwatchers start-if-not-running

The watch-for-* scripts will spawn bin/take-picture to actually take the
picture and they will be placed in the same dir that ctlwatchers exists,
unless you set PICSOFOURLIVES_DESTDIR to a directory name.


The image files will be named
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.png
    YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (extra text).png
where the latter form is used if bin/take-picture is passed arguments to be the
"extra text".


I usually start it manually when I first login, but you can put something like
the following in your crontab:

*/5 * * * * PICSOFOURLIVES_DESTDIR=/target/dir /home/user/picsofourlives/ctlwatchers start-if-not-running > /dev/null 2>&1

which will attempt to start it every 5 minutes.

My process is:
  - start it when logging in
  - every once and a while, check the directory for new images (it's a shortcut
    in my Places menu)
  - open kflickr using the desktop icon in the directory
  - drag the ones I want to upload, select the flickr set to upload to
  - move the ones I've uploaded into pics-transfered
  - move other ones I didn't upload but that I want to keep into pics-extra

I don't upload every picture taken automatically because sometimes they come
out crappy (blurry because of movement) and because I deactivate my
screensaver dozens of times a day and I really only want to make two or three
at most available from each day.