camsnap

What This Skill Does

The camsnap skill is a powerful automation utility for OpenClaw designed to interface with RTSP and ONVIF-compliant IP cameras. It allows users to programmatically capture high-quality still images, record video clips, and monitor for motion events directly through the agent interface. By leveraging ffmpeg as a backend, camsnap handles complex stream decoding and encoding, providing a clean abstraction for users to integrate physical surveillance and monitoring into their automated workflows.

Installation

To integrate camsnap into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/0xspeter/camsnap-1-0-0

Post-installation, ensure that ffmpeg is installed and accessible in your system's PATH. Configuration is handled via ~/.config/camsnap/config.yaml. You can register new devices using: camsnap add --name [name] --host [ip] --user [user] --pass [pass]. It is recommended to run camsnap doctor --probe after initial setup to verify connectivity and codec compatibility.

Use Cases

• Automated Security: Trigger snapshots when doors open or specific zones detect movement.
• Home Monitoring: Regularly capture stills to create time-lapse footage or store periodic logs.
• Event Archiving: Automatically save 5-second video clips to cloud storage or local directories when a specific motion threshold is met.
• System Health Checks: Use the built-in diagnostic tools to monitor camera uptime and signal integrity.

Example Prompts

1. "Capture a snapshot from the 'kitchen' camera and save it as kitchen_status.jpg for my report."
2. "Monitor the 'driveway' camera; if movement exceeds 0.3, record a 10-second clip and notify me."
3. "Run a diagnostic check on all configured cameras to ensure they are streaming correctly."

Tips & Limitations

• Performance: Always perform a short test capture before initiating long-form recording tasks to ensure network stability.
• Dependencies: The skill relies heavily on ffmpeg. If you encounter errors, ensure your camera's RTSP URL is correct and your system codecs are up to date.
• Optimization: For heavy motion detection tasks, consider keeping the threshold value conservative to avoid false positives. Note that constant streaming consumes significant bandwidth; monitor your network overhead accordingly.