remote-camera

Takes a picture and posts it to a remote server. So far only for Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) and Mac (untested). It takes a picture and attempts to upload it as soon as you call the main function. Minimal example that should work:

require('remotecamera')("http://httpbin.org/post", console.log);

Install it with a simple

npm install remotecamera --save

Full example

This is a working full example. After cloning the project, just do a node example.js to see it in action, it will fire once the camera.

// Include the library
var remotecamera = require('./index.js');
 
// Takes and posts an image with some error handling
remotecamera("http://httpbin.org/post", function(err, res, body){
  if (err) return console.log(err);
  if (res.statusCode !== 200) return console.log("Error: " + res.statusCode);
  console.log("Image posted!");
});
 
// For posting a single picture you don't even need this, but it's nice to have
require('http').createServer().listen(3000);

Options

Since this library does so much (based on other libraries), there are many options that can be set and edited. The basic function looks like this:

var options = {};
var callback = function(err, res, body){};
remotecamera(options, callback);

Where options can be a string or an object {}. If it's a string, say "http://httpbin.org/post", it behaves the same way as if it was this object: { url: "http://httpbin.org/post" }.

url

Specify the end point where it attempts to post the picture taken. This is the only required argument, as the library needs to know where to send it. It's a string to an endpoint that accepts post requests with files. Examples:

require('remotecamera')({ url: "http://httpbin.org/post" });

width: 640 and height: 480

Only for linux

Specifies the resolution of the image taken in pixels, where width defaults to 640 and height to 480. Please don't specify anything besides numbers. Example:

require('remotecamera')({ width: 1280, height: 720, url: "http://httpbin.org/post" });

name: new Date().getTime() + '_' + uid.v4()

The local and remote name for the file (without the extension). It's made from a timestamp and a random id joined by an underscore. This example posts the local file called screenshot.jpg:

require('remotecamera')({ name: "screenshot", url: "http://httpbin.org/post" });

form: "image"

The field name for the image when posting. Example:

require('remotecamera')({ form: "screenshot", url: "http://httpbin.org/post" });

This is similar to doing this in html:

<input type="file" name="screenshot">

This is useful for retrieving the image on the other end since it gives it a friendly name. Defaults to "image"

folder: "images"

The name of the local folder where we will store the temporary file.

require('remotecamera')({ folder: "images", url: "http://httpbin.org/post" });

data: {}

Any extra data that you want to post, such as a secret for authentication. It should be a plain object with pairs of keys and values, where the key will become the name. Example:

var options = {
  data: { secret: "verysecret", key: "muchawesome", doge: "guau" },
  url: "http://httpbin.org/post"
};
 
require('remotecamera')(options);

This would be roughly similar to this:

<input name="secret" value="verysecret">
<input name="key" value="muchawesome">
<input name="doge" value="guau">

Support and installation issues

The lack of support for other platforms comes because it uses some command-line utilities to take the screenshots. This is because the library was created primarily for a Raspberry Pi project. You don't need to install anything manually, the required packages are auto-installed the first time that they are run.

For linux you might be prompted to provide the sudo password to install streamer if you don't have it installed (or you can pre-install it manually).

For mac it will install imagesnap with brew if not installed (or you can pre-install it manually).

The code simplifies a lot this kind of tasks and was thoroughly cleaned up, so I recommend that you dig into it if you need support on any other platform or want to test it on Mac. Also please send a Pull Request if you add support, everyone will benefit! (: