Calling an external program when the capture device fails?

Question

Hi, I'm using Motion with a Logitech Quickcam Sphere MP on a Raspberry Pi. They work perfectly most of the time, but after every few days it would silently stop working, with the captured frames turning into grey frames with the "UNABLE TO OPEN VIDEO DEVICE" message on the top left. It goes away after I reboot the system, but right now I have to manually check whether the system still works.

Is it possible for Motion to call an external program when the capture device stops working? This way I can let the Raspberry Pi reboot itself when the camera fails. Thanks!

Environment

Motion version:	3.2.12
ffmpeg version:
Libraries:	ffmpeg
Server OS:	Raspbian wheezy

-- JimmyYen - 26 Feb 2013

Answer

Sadly Motion does not have any events triggered or status information that says a camera is no longer passing video frames

-- KennethLavrsen - 01 Mar 2013