I got a smart garden from work last Christmas and was very excited to try it out. At that point I had a haworthia zebra plant, a begonia maculata, a mango plant, and an avocado plant. I started the last 2 plants from seed. And no, I don’t expect them to bear any fruit.
I really wanted to grow something that I can consume later, so I ordered a packet of wild strawberry pods. I also ordered a raspberrypi camera module and made a timelapse video.
Here’s my setup,
- write a python script to take one picture using the raspberrypi camera
- schedule the python script to run every 30 minutes
- wait for 4 months…and make a timelapse using
ffmpeg! - add some music to the video
Code snipet to take 1 picture:
#!/home/pi/.pyenv/shims/python3
from time import sleep
from datetime import datetime
from picamera import PiCamera
import pytz
camera = PiCamera()
camera.resolution = (1024, 768)
camera.start_preview()
# Camera warm-up time
sleep(2)
filename = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('US/Eastern')).strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
camera.capture("/home/pi/camera/" + filename + ".jpg")
Crontab entry to execute the python script every 30 minutes:
# every 30 minutes
*/30 * * * * /home/pi/camera/timelapse.py
Steps to install ffmpeg and make timelapse:
- I followed this detailed instructionto install ffmpeg
- I followed this blog post to make the video. TL;DR: use
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -pattern_type glob -i "./*.jpg" -s:v 1440x1080 -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -pix_fmt yuv420p wildstrawberry.mp4
Adding music
Ever watched a movie that sxxk axx but has great soundtrack? To make the timelapse more interesting to watch, I used this uplifting piece from uppbeat.io as the background music. The free tier subscription allows for 3 downloads per month.
Then I used iMovie to combine everything and export the final video ready for upload!
The resolution of the video is not great. And you can’t see the strawberries very clearly. So here’s a picture of my last harvest.
I still have a packet of cherry tomato pods, and a packet of moss rose pods. I can’t wait to try them out later this year 😆