📷 pyLapse – RTSP Snapshot to Timelapse

A Python tool that captures periodic snapshots from an RTSP stream (e.g. IP camera), saves them with a timestamp, and optionally builds a timelapse video.

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🛠 Features

• 🎥 Capture snapshots from RTSP streams using ffmpeg
• ⏱️ Configurable capture interval and total duration via a YAML config file
• 🗂️ Automatically creates snapshot output directories if they don’t exist
• 🎞️ Builds a timelapse video at the end with configurable frame rate
• 📓 Logs all actions using Python's logging module

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📦 Requirements

• Python 3.8 or later
• ffmpeg must be installed and available in your system's PATH

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🐍 Setup (Windows & Linux)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/your-username/pyLapse.git
cd pyLapse

2. Create a virtual environment

# Linux/macOS
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Windows
python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

🔧 Configuration

Create a configuration file named config.yaml in the project root:

rtsp_url: "rtsp://your-camera-url"
interval_seconds: 60       # Time between snapshots
duration_minutes: 30       # Total run time
output_dir: "snapshots"    # Where to save images
timelapse:
  enabled: true
  fps: 24                  # Frames per second for the output video
  output_file: "timelapse.mp4"

▶️ Run the script

python capture_timelapse_images.py

🧪 Optional: Systemd service (Linux only)

You can configure this script to run automatically using a systemd service.

Create a file like /etc/systemd/system/pylapse.service:

[Unit]
Description=pyLapse RTSP Timelapse Capture
After=network.target

[Service]
Type = simple
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/pyLapse
ExecStart=/path/to/venv/bin/python capture_timelapse_images.py
Restart=on-failure
SyslogIdentifier=ehsSentinel
RestartSec=5
TimeoutStartSec=infinity


[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then enable and start it:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable pylapse.service
sudo systemctl start pylapse.service

❗ ffmpeg installation

Windows

Download from: https://ffmpeg.org/download.html Unzip it and add the bin/ folder to your system PATH.

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg

📁 Output

Captured images will be saved to the configured output_dir, timestamped. If timelapse is enabled, a video will be generated at the end using the captured frames.