:movie_camera::iphone: MotionEye-Telegram

:warning: Deprecation notice :warning:

This project started as a problem solver for ourself and did his job very well. Unfortunately, as things move on, development has stopped a long time ago. This is why it is officially being archived. There is a chance that it will continue to work for some people. If you like it - good. If it doesn't work - Sorry for wasting your time, feeling bad for you.

:heart: Contribute!

We noticed that people are really using motioneye-telegram, that is awesome. If you encounter any problems or can't find something you are searching for, feel free to start a discussion, contact us (of course) via Telegram or by adding an issue. Any ideas are welcome!

:zap: Features

• send latest n snapshots and video via telegram
• presence-check (you are not at home by pinging one or more eg. smartphones)
• no port forwardings or open ports required (443 outbound must be possible)
• no telegram-bot installation required
• ! currently there are some problems with wifi-devices in energy saving mode, any help appreciated.

:clipboard: Prerequisites

For these scripts to run, you have to ensure that your environment meets the follwing prerequisites:

• Minimum, by motioneye supported, Raspberry Pi (SBC)
• Raspberry Pi OS Version Buster (Debian 10) or higher
• latest motioneye installed
• tested with motion Version 4.4.0 and motionEye Version 0.42.1
• somehow fixed IP Adress for your smartphone(s) or other devices

:robot: Bot-Creation

create a new telegram-bot

• look for @botfather in telegram and open a chat
• enter the following command and follow the wizard for creation

  /newbot
  

• write down your HTTP API KEY

get your chat-id:

• start a conversation with @jsondumpbot.
• this will return a json-styled message to you which includes your chat-id:
• for example:

  "chat": {
    "id": <your chat id, eg. 321654987>,
    (... some more content ...)
  },
  

• take note of your chat-id and save it alongside your http api key

privacy activation

• details can be found here
• send the following command to @botfather to use some more privacy

  /setprivacy
  

more telegram commands:

• you can enter these into telegram if you want to

  /setdescription - changes the bot-description
  /setabouttext - changes the bot-about-description
  /setuserpic - changes the photo in your bot-profile
  

:keyboard: installation of motioneye-telegram

• go to your home directory on your raspberry pi

  cd ~
  

• install prerequisites

  sudo apt install -y arping tree git
  

• download all the files from github

  git clone https://github.com/DaniW42/motioneye-telegram.git
  

• start the installation script

  cd motioneye-telegram
  ./install-tg.sh
  

install the cronjob for presence check

to install the cronjob for presence check we have to run install-cron.sh as root (using sudo).

as we should never run unknown scripts as root, we kindly invite you to take a sneek peak at install-cron.sh before continuing. to install the cronjob (which runs bin/presencecheck.sh every minute):

• start the installation script and carefully read the instructions given

  sudo ./install-cron.sh
  

:rocket: using motioneye-telegram as motioneye notification

• toggle Still Images on and select Capture Mode
• toggle Movies on and select Recording Mode
• look for your script path and enter it in motioneye ("run an end command" in "motion notification") e.g. /home/pi/motioneye-telegram/bin/motion-send.sh %$ %t
• %$ important because it passes the camera name to the script
• %t important because it passes the camera id to the script

Made with :heart: in Bavaria :beers: