Take a manual photo/snapshot?

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buckerschris
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2020 5:41 am

Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by buckerschris »

Hi,

New user here, having just bought a "Amcrest 4K UltraHD PoE Outdoor Security Camera (IP8M-T2499EW)".

I've setup Amcrest Cloud and can view the live camera on my PC and Android phone (albeit with a noticeable 10 second live delay?).

I'm looking to take manual photos/snaphosts every 10 minutes, with the aim of making a timelapse video using each still. Is this possible? How would I do this?

Thanks,

Chris.
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longedge
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Posts: 584
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:34 am

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by longedge »

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I have one of my cameras dedicated to looking at the sky (for my weather station page :) ) and I have been experimenting with this for some time now.

This is one I did a few days ago https://youtu.be/yG8WHJSyTXI. That's with snapshots every half hour but I've found that about 5 - 10 seconds produces good results for normal timelapse.

In order to grab the individual stills, I built a little app that uses the camera's cgi interface and makes calls at intervals that I set before running the app " http://username:password@ipaddress/cgi-bin/snapshot.cgi ". I found that when you make this call, not only is the snapshot returned but the camera also saves a copy in whatever folder you have configured as the destination folder for snapshots in the camera settings. I can later go back and copy them from that folder (in my case on my NAS).

I turned off all the events in the camera settings so that I don't inadvertently get odd snapshots mixed in with my timed ones.

I'm not aware of any way to do this sort of thing natively.
My AMCREST Cameras:-
2 x IP3M-941B firmware V2.620.00AC00.3.R, Build Date: 2019-12-18
1 x IP2M-841B firmware V2.420.AC00.18.R, Build Date: 2019-08-03
buckerschris
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2020 5:41 am

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by buckerschris »

Hi, and thanks for the quick & detailed reply.

That's brilliant. I've just tried going to the "snapshot.cgi" manually via a browser and it does indeed bring up a photo. I'm a web developer by trade so it shouldn't be too tricky to get this working as you've described above.

I'll see how I get on!

Much appreciated.
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longedge
Site Admin
Posts: 584
Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:34 am

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by longedge »

That's great, I'm glad it's working for you.

I do a number of other things with my app which don't lend themselves to html so I haven't tried it but I imagine that a very simple html page with a suitable refresh tag would work.
My AMCREST Cameras:-
2 x IP3M-941B firmware V2.620.00AC00.3.R, Build Date: 2019-12-18
1 x IP2M-841B firmware V2.420.AC00.18.R, Build Date: 2019-08-03
jack7
Posts: 904
Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:46 pm

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by jack7 »

Longedge,
You wrote "I'm not aware of any way to do this sort of thing natively."

Here's how I"ve done it natively in the past to store snapshots on SD card.
In camera Web UI:
snap1.JPG
snap1.JPG (45.08 KiB) Viewed 3752 times
snap2.JPG
snap2.JPG (56.92 KiB) Viewed 3752 times
Set up General(green) time periods to capture snapshots in Snapshot Schedule.
snap3.JPG
snap3.JPG (89.2 KiB) Viewed 3752 times
In Amcrest View Pro to batch export any or all snapshots from SD card to PC, go to Playback, click Event, click camera, enable Picture, select time frame, Search, select snapshots to export, click Export (1st icon at bottom right), and select folder to export to.
snap4.JPG
snap4.JPG (199.35 KiB) Viewed 3752 times
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longedge
Site Admin
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Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:34 am

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by longedge »

@jack7 - Yes, point taken and indeed I tried that myself initially but the results were not accurate/reliable in terms of timed intervals. I was also getting snapshots triggered in other ways and although the naming convention used by the camera gives an indication of what the event was I then had to parse all the files to delete those I didn't want. That's why I mentioned turning off all events.

Evenly spaced snapshots result in a smoother video when editing and I can take very accurately timed snapshots between about 3 seconds upwards. The longest that I've actually used was half an hour but theoretically there's no upper limit and it's timed to the millisecond.
My AMCREST Cameras:-
2 x IP3M-941B firmware V2.620.00AC00.3.R, Build Date: 2019-12-18
1 x IP2M-841B firmware V2.420.AC00.18.R, Build Date: 2019-08-03
jack7
Posts: 904
Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:46 pm

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by jack7 »

Longedge,
I think your HTTP snapshot program is great and well thought out. I guess my last post tutorial was posted more for people who can't or don't want to write code :) . The ASP screen I posted shows all the snapshots at 15 seconds intervals as I had specified. I just tried 1 second intervals for a while and then 5 minute intervals. Results looked fine. I am using a SD card. Perhaps your inaccurate results were because you were using FTP or NAS, or competing with other events recording on the same storage device. Just guessing...

Jack
johnmac78
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2020 2:34 pm

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by johnmac78 »

I realize this is an older post, but I have IP8M-T2499EW camera and have not been able to get the snapshot function to work. I am using IPTIMELAPSE, which works fine on other brands of IP cameras, including a different Amcrest camera.

Amcrest support says there is no Command for snapshots, but when I first set it up, it was downloading pictures, then just stopped. This is the command I am using, with my username and password in place of username and password.

http://username:[email protected] ... apshot.cgi

I have tried just about every possible combinations with no luck. Any suggestions
WoodchuckVT
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:08 am

Re: Take a manual photo/snapshot?

Post by WoodchuckVT »

IPTimelape Pro (iptimelapse.com) is an absolute must for anyone who wants to create timelapse videos or wants to post their IP camera images to a website. It is specifically designed to capture the current IP camera image (snapshot) using a cgi command. It includes an FTP function for sending individual images or timelapse movies to your website. You can test it out for 7 days, and only costs $79.00. Too many features to list here. I use it with an old Axis IP camera to, at the end of the day, automatically create a timelapse of the day's weather sky view, and post it to my website:
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