lastsnap.jpg not being created

Question

I have motion setup and functioning on my raspberry pi except one small issue...

I have only changed a few settings in the motion.conf file; daemon on, target_dir, control_localhost off, and on_picture_save echo "Motion Detected: " | mutt -a %f lastsnap.jpg -s "MOTION DETECTED: OFFICE" -- emailaddress@gmail.com >> /tmp/motion

That's about all I can think that I have changed. I have the motion user and group able to create images in the target directory just fine, but for the life of me can not get the lastsnap.jpg file to appear. As I mentioned I am running in daemon mode and have it started under the motion user as seen in my terminal output, as well as the rights on my target dir.

Any help would be very much appreciated !!!!

Thanks in advance.

pi@raspberrypi /media/usb1/ha/presence/motion/pics $ sudo ps -aux | grep motion
warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'?
See http://gitorious.org/procps/procps/blobs/master/Documentation/FAQ
motion    2168  2.7  1.7  47952  7876 ?        Sl   21:59   1:07 /usr/bin/motion


------


pi@raspberrypi /media/usb1/ha/presence/motion $ ls -las
total 32
 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root   root    4096 Feb 24 17:12 .
 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root   root    4096 Feb 24 16:55 ..
20 drwxr-xr-x 2 motion motion 20480 Feb 27 21:58 pics

Environment

Motion version:	3.2.12
ffmpeg version:	0.8.5-6:0.8.5-1+rpi1
Libraries:
Server OS:	Raspbery Pi (Raspbian Wheezy)

-- JasonMachtemes - 28 Feb 2013

Answer

Hi

If you go back to the Motion Guide documentation and read about the snapshot feature then you will find that this is the feature that relate to and create links called lastsnap.jpg. The snapshot feature means a regular webcam that just keeps on saving an image at a timed interval no matter the motion.

Motion detected images are saved when output_normal is not disabling it and to filenames given by jpeg_filename and movie_filename for movies

For the purpose you have on_picture_save should send a picture of the last image saved from the motion based webcam feature. And it is the %f that points to this file.

You will end up with 100s of emails so you should consider on_event_start or on_event_end for this purpose

-- KennethLavrsen - 01 Mar 2013