This project is to capture periodic screenshots from an MJPEG video stream.

I wrote this to capture timelapse footage from my iPhone running the DroidCam application.

How to use

1. Install the requirements

pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Setup the .env file

echo "STREAM_URL=http://ip:port/video" > .env

2. Run the script

python main.py

Screenshots are saved in the snapshots directory.

Docker instructions

1. Build the docker image

docker build -t mjpeg-timelapse .

2. Run the docker container

docker run --env-file .env -v $(pwd)/snapshots:/app/snapshots -d --network host mjpeg-timelapse

Note: We use host networking to allow the container to access the local network. If your device is on an external network I would reccomend using a bridge network for greater security.

If all goes well you should see an output like:

2024-07-24 17:43:12 Python 3.9.19
2024-07-24 17:43:12 Environment Variables:
2024-07-24 17:43:12 HOSTNAME=docker-desktop
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PYTHON_PIP_VERSION=23.0.1
2024-07-24 17:43:12 HOME=/root
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
2024-07-24 17:43:12 GPG_KEY=E3FF2839C048B25C084DEBE9B26995E310250568
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PYTHON_GET_PIP_URL=https://github.com/pypa/get-pip/raw/e03e1607ad60522cf34a92e834138eb89f57667c/public/get-pip.py
2024-07-24 17:43:12 STREAM_URL=http://ip:port/video
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
2024-07-24 17:43:12 LANG=C.UTF-8
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PYTHON_VERSION=3.9.19
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PYTHON_SETUPTOOLS_VERSION=58.1.0
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PWD=/app
2024-07-24 17:43:12 PYTHON_GET_PIP_SHA256=ee09098395e42eb1f82ef4acb231a767a6ae85504a9cf9983223df0a7cbd35d7
2024-07-24 17:43:13 Snapshot saved as snapshots/snapshot_1721864593.jpg

Future improvements

• Integrate with ffmpeg to turn the screenshots into a timelapse video