Zoneminder&Telegram (event instant messaging to your phone!)

[PacoLM]

Hi,

I was thinking in using my ZM server to be able to send instant messages to my phone with the pictures or videos. I found some information about how to send instant messaging with WhatsApp, but the company has changed the auth process, so I moved to Telegram (http://www.telegram.org).
You need to install expect (apt-get install expect).

Right now, I have Telegram CLI working in my ZM server (easy, just followed some instructions detailed here https://github.com/vysheng/tg), and wrote a simple bash script that allows me to send a message and a picture of the event.

This is the script, adapted from many different sources on the web:

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/expect
set user [lindex $argv 0]
set text [lindex $argv 1]
set image [lindex $argv 2]
set video [lindex $argv 3]
# this is the path where telegram CLI is installed and the public key for the server
spawn /usr/src/telegram/tg-master/telegram -k /usr/src/telegram/tg-master/tg.pub
expect "User"
send "msg $user $text\r"
send "send_photo $user $image\r"
send "send_video $user $video\r"
expect "Sent:"
send "safe_quit\r"
expect eof

It seems reasonable to add a new option in the filter settings, to allow users to send also a instant message instead of sending an email, ftp to a server, etc. If I have time, I will try to add the option in the filter window and also add the code in the zmfilter.pl. I have experience programming in C#, Tcl and VB, but I'm not 'fluent' in Python, Perl or PHP, so, if anyone wants to take the credits and add this feature...just go ahead!

Regards,

PacoLM

[PacoLM]

Hi,

Some advances, using python:

Code: Select all

#!usr/bin/python
import pexpect
import time
import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Script to send images to Telegram')
parser.add_argument('-u','--user',help='User name', required=True)
parser.add_argument('-m','--message',help='Message', required=True)
parser.add_argument('-i','--imagefile',help='Image filename', required=True)
args = parser.parse_args()
# use your telegram location here
telegram = pexpect.spawn('/etc/telegram/telegram -k /etc/telegram/tg-server.pub') 
telegram.expect('0m')
telegram.sendline('msg '+args.user+' '+args.message)
telegram.sendline('send_photo '+args.user+' '+args.imagefile)
telegram.expect('100',timeout = 1200)
telegram.expect('photo')
telegram.expect('0m')
telegram.sendline('safe_quit')

The python script allows to send a message to the user with the parameters: User, Message & Image.

Regards,

PacoLM

[PacoLM]

No one interested?

[6i6i]

Hi!

I am very interested in doing the same thing! Have you made any progress on this?

BR
Martin

[PacoLM]

Hi!

I am very interested in doing the same thing! Have you made any progress on this?

BR
Martin

Hi,

Yes, I have setup telegram-cli in the same server running as a daemon. It's executing a script and responding to a set of user defined commands, like '1', that sends a capture of the camera number 1, '1x' makes a small video of 10 captures.

Regards,

PacoLM

[6i6i]

Sounds cool. Could you share the script?

BR
Martin

[asker]

Does it make sense to contribute that feature to https://github.com/pliablepixels/zmeventserver ?

[6i6i]

That would be very nice.

[PacoLM]

Hi,

First of all, I recommend you to follow the instructions explained here (https://github.com/vysheng/tg) in order to have the telegram client installed in your server. Once you have done this, you need to run the telegram client as a daemon and run a script when a custom command is sent. I have 5 cameras, so sending the camera number from my telegram ID to myself, request and send a picture of the camera.
This could be improved, being executed only when motion is detected, so a video could be created and be sent. It is in my huge lists of ToDo things. I will post detailed instructions later, but is not difficult after reading some how-to guides in the internet.

Regards,

PacoLM

[6i6i]

I already have the telgram client installed and running (but not as an daemon).
I think you mean I should configure a zoneminder filter which launches a custom script if the filter is being executed (I think I am able to do this with "Execute command on all matches" line)?
But how do I get an actual picture of the camera for example if I send 1 do my telegram daemon?

BR

[StNick]

HI PacoLM.

I came here because I was writing a Python script myself to do the very same thing. I have it executing my script just fine, but it seems that Zoneminder only passes a single argument to the command specified in "Execute command on all events". That argument is the path to the event itself. How are you getting it to pass the path to the image?

[olgs]

You get an image by:

- shelling out to bash in the script and doing a wget or curl directly at the camera, e.g. wget http://ip.of.the.camera/snapshot.cgi ; or
- use the argument directly and write a script to create a video using ffmpeg, send it using telegram then delete the video, see below.

Note that the code below send the video twice--this is to get around the bug/feature of newer Telegram clients that change all small MP4 to inline looping video and 3GP as videos you can actually download.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/ffmpeg -hide_banner -nostats -loglevel 0 -y -r 1 -i $2/%05d-capture.jpg -an -r 5 -filter:v "setpts=0.2*PTS" -vcodec libx264 -crf 40 -f mp4 /usr/share/zoneminder/www/video.mp4
/usr/local/bin/telegram-cli -D -k /etc/telegram-cli/server.pub -c /etc/telegram-cli/config -W -e "send_video $1 /usr/share/zoneminder/www/video.mp4" </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1
mv /usr/share/zoneminder/www/video.mp4 /usr/share/zoneminder/www/video.3gp
/usr/local/bin/telegram-cli -D -k /etc/telegram-cli/server.pub -c /etc/telegram-cli/config -W -e "send_document $1 /usr/share/zoneminder/www/video.3gp" </dev/null >/dev/null 2>&1
rm -f /usr/share/zoneminder/www/sendtg.3gp

kl

[woody4165]

Hi,

First of all, I recommend you to follow the instructions explained here (https://github.com/vysheng/tg) in order to have the telegram client installed in your server. Once you have done this, you need to run the telegram client as a daemon and run a script when a custom command is sent. I have 5 cameras, so sending the camera number from my telegram ID to myself, request and send a picture of the camera.
This could be improved, being executed only when motion is detected, so a video could be created and be sent. It is in my huge lists of ToDo things. I will post detailed instructions later, but is not difficult after reading some how-to guides in the internet.

Regards,

PacoLM

Hi PacoLM

I am trying to send notification via Telegram, already installed in my RPi, but with no success.

I still have to understand more, especially about Filters.
What I was trying to do, looking at the example in the Options/Email tab, was to integrate with Telegram, sending a notification and an image to it.

So I wrote a small script like this:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
message="Test $1"
curl --data chat_id=xxxxxx --data-urlencode "text=$message"  "https://api.telegram.org/botxxxxxxxxxxx/sendMessage"
curl -s -X POST "https://api.telegram.org/botxxxxxxxx/sendPhoto" -F chat_id
=xxxxxxx -F photo="@$2"
exit 0

and in the field "Execute command on all matches" I wrote "/pathto/example.sh %ED% %EIM%"
but what I get is a message "Test %ED%"

How can I give the script the right informations?

Thanks

[PacoLM]

Hi,

What I did is to write a LUA script that runs the Telegram daemon, I send a command in the Telegram app that generates a capture of the selected camera(s). Is just the other way around, Telegram is used to get the information, is not ZM sending a message on demand.

Regards,
PacoLM

[woody4165]

Ok. I got ir. But how do you activate it from Zm?
Can you share the activation part? In the previous msg, I have not send Lua script, but other language one, is it correct?
Thanks