External Commands

Motion can execute external commands based on the motion detection and related events. They are all described in this section. The option quiet is also included in this section.

A redesign of the external commands was due. They were not very easy to understand, not all were flexible enough and some were missing. So a new external command feature set was made for 3.2.1 and on.

This is how the new script commands look like:

Function	Old Option	New Option	Argument Appended
Start of event (first motion)	execute	on_event_start	None
End of event (no motion for gap seconds)	New!	on_event_end	None
Picture saved (jpg or ppm)	onsave	on_picture_save	Filename of picture
Movie starts (mpeg file opened)	onmpeg	on_movie_start	Filename of movie
Movie ends (mpeg file closed)	onffmpegclose	on_movie_end	Filename of movie
Motion detected (each single frame with Motion detected)	New!	on_motion_detected	None

Mail and sms has been removed because they were not configurable. If you want to send event-based mails or sms, just use one of those commands above and send the mail from that script. See What happened to mail and sms?

Security Warning! Note that this feature also means you have to pay attention to the following.

• Anyone with access to the remote control port (http) can execute any command on your computer with the same privileges as the user running Motion. Anyone can access your control port if you have not either limited access to localhost or limited access using firewalls in the server. You should always have a router between a machine running Motion with remote control enabled and the Internet and make sure the Motion control port is not accessible from the outside.
• If you limit control port to localhost you still need to take care of any user logging into the server with any kind of GUI or terminal session. All it takes is a browser or single command line execution to change settings in Motion.
• It is a good idea to run Motion as a harmless user. Not as root!!

These are the options

What happened to mail and sms?

The 6 new on_xxxxx options replace the former execute, mail and sms options.

They are quite generic and flexible. These small bash scripts gives to the same functionality as mail and sms BUT you have all the flexibility you want to extend the messages, change the 'from' email address etc.

Sending email at start of event

_Script written by JoergWeber _

#!/bin/sh

# Motion sample script to send an e-mail at start of an event.
# Replaces the former 'mail' option.
# Just define this script as 'on_event_start'-script in motion.conf like that:
# on_event_start send_mail "%Y-%m-%d %T"

#change to suit your needs:
#location of 'mail' binary
MAIL="/usr/bin/mail"
#Destination e-mail address
TO="root@localhost"
#Subject of the e-mail
SUBJECT="Motion detected"

#Don't change anything below this line
echo -e "This is an automated message generated by motion.\n\nMotion detected: $1\n\n" | $MAIL -s "$SUBJECT" $TO

Sending SMS at start of event

_Script written by JoergWeber _

If you uncomment the line #/usr/local/bin/send_mail $1 you can combine both sending email and sms.

#!/bin/sh

# Motion sample script to send an sms at start of an event.
# Replaces the former 'sms' option.
# Just define this script as 'on_event_start'-script in motion.conf like that:
# on_event_start send_sms "%Y-%m-%d %T"
#
# If you want to send an e-mail message here as well, just uncomment the last
# line of this script.

#change to suit your needs:
#location of 'sms-client' binary
SMS_CLIENT="/usr/bin/sms_client"
#Destination sms number
TO="12345"

#Don't change anything below this line
$SMS_CLIENT $TO "Motion detected $1"

#/usr/local/bin/send_mail $1

-- KennethLavrsen - 22 Apr 2005

The bit that I wanted which wasn't obvious (to me) from the above was to have captured images (on motion) emailed to me as an attachement.

In motion.conf

on_picture_save /full/path/to/send_email

Then the contents of /full/path/to/send_email is

mutt -a $1 -- -s 'motion capture' you@example.com < '.'