Cameras — viewing frames and timelapses

Where camera frames show up, the viewer, timelapse assembly, retention, and what regions will add.

• Overview zone card: the latest frame as a thumbnail. Refresh interval is a browser preference (Camera thumbnail refresh), so a phone on mobile data can poll slowly.
• Twin: with the Devices layer on, each tent camera's latest frame hangs as a small screen at its mount; in Replay it shows the frame nearest that time, or says none was captured then.
• Settings › Devices › Cameras: the full card with Test source, framing and controls.

Click a thumbnail. The viewer shows the latest frame full size with its capture time, Capture now, the stored frames as a strip for the day picked in the day chips, and Timelapse: Assemble builds that day's frames into a video on the Pi with ffmpeg. Built clips stay listed; a camera can also assemble daily or weekly by itself (Settings › Devices › Cameras). When the camera was moved inside the span, each view is its own clip (2026-09-14-view1.mp4, …-view2.mp4) and the list says where each one starts, so no timelapse cuts from one view to another.

• One frame per interval (default 10 minutes), named in the kit's local time: day folders match your day. Frames recorded before 16 Sep 2026 were named in UTC and were renamed once; a renamed-to-kit-time.json beside them lists every old and new name.
• Lights-on only by default, so a dark tent does not fill the disk with black frames.
• Per-camera retention in days and a GB cap. The oldest frames are pruned first; the storage card under Settings › System counts them.

Mirror, flip, rotate and zoom are baked into the stored frame so the timelapse, the thumbnail and any future pixel regions always agree. If you change framing, older frames keep their old framing.

In the viewer's Plant regions section, set a reference frame and draw one polygon per plant or area. Every new frame is first compared with the reference view: if the camera was moved or nudged, the section reads CAMERA MOVED and no number is recorded until you re-reference (the polygons are kept) or redraw. Each lit frame then records cover — the share of the polygon that reads as foliage (mylar and shadow are excluded). It is uncalibrated until you set a scale marker (two points and the real distance between them); then it also shows cm² for the plane the marker lies in. Canopy cover is a picture measure — the zone's canopy m² for yield maths is typed in under Settings › Zones.

Every lit frame is also compared with the frame before it. A re-aim, a nudge or a framing change (a different frame size) is recorded under View changes in the viewer with the time and the reason, and it starts a new timelapse clip. Check older frames walks the last 30 days of stored frames in the background (a frame at a time, so the kit is not slowed) and adds any view changes from before this check existed. No reference frame or regions are needed for this.

• Daily photo: the first lit frame after 12:00 goes into the zone's tent journal as a photo entry. On by default; turn it off per camera in Settings › Devices › Cameras.
• Stage change: when a pot's growth stage changes, the tent journal gets an entry with that minute's frame.
• Critical alert: an entry with the frame when a critical alert turns on — in the tent's journal when the alert names a tent, otherwise in the facility journal with every tent camera's frame.
• Harvest and Flip to flower: logging either on a plant attaches the tent camera's frame to that entry.

“That minute's frame” is the newest stored frame when it is under 10 minutes old, otherwise a fresh capture. A lights-off frame is never attached.

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DSC-Brain user guide · Cameras — viewing frames and timelapses · this page is edited on the site; the Notion original was retired after the mirror