bb_monitor

bb_monitor is a simple monitoring tool that extracts the first frame from each video recorded by your camera system, adds timestamps and filenames, combines them into a composite image, and sends it to a Telegram bot. It's useful for remote checks on multi-camera setups.

Features

• Extracts and stamps first frames from recent videos
• Optionally saves individual images
• Creates a vertically stacked composite image
• Sends results via Telegram on a set schedule
• Configurable via Python config files

Installation

git clone https://github.com/BioroboticsLab/bb_monitor.git
cd bb_monitor
pip install .

Configuration

You can pass a config file as a command-line argument:

python bb_monitor.py /path/to/my_config.py

If no config is provided, the script will try to load user_config.py, and finally fall back to default_config.py. Create your config by copying and editing default_config.py.

Running

Run the script using either:

python bb_monitor.py /path/to/my_config.py

or (with user_config.py in the root):

python bb_monitor.py

Running multiple configs

If you have several monitor configs (e.g. one per hive plus feeders/exits), run them all in one process with bb_monitor_multi.py:

python bb_monitor_multi.py hiveA_monitor_config.py hiveB_monitor_config.py \
                           hiveC_monitor_config.py hiveD_monitor_config.py \
                           feeders_monitor_config.py exitcams_monitor_config.py

Or with a glob: python bb_monitor_multi.py *_monitor_config.py.

Each config runs in its own thread; if a thread crashes it auto-restarts after 10s. Ctrl-C exits the whole launcher.

System check

bb_monitor_systemcheck.py is a separate script that runs on a regular interval (hourly by default) and posts a single status message to a Telegram channel that is independent of the monitor image bot. It performs two kinds of checks:

• Reachability — ICMP-pings each host listed in systemcheck_ping_hosts (typically the Raspberry Pi camera hosts).
• Remote process check — for each entry in systemcheck_process_hosts, SSHes to the host, runs the configured command, and counts occurrences of a substring in the output. If the count is below min_count, the host is flagged. This is generic enough to cover both nvidia-smi-based GPU process checks and plain pgrep checks.

SSH keys must be configured for passwordless login from the machine running the script to every host in systemcheck_process_hosts.

Configuration lives in a separate file from the monitor config so the two can use different Telegram bots/chats. Copy default_config_systemcheck.py to user_config_systemcheck.py (gitignored) and edit:

python bb_monitor_systemcheck.py /path/to/my_systemcheck_config.py

If no config is passed on the command line, the script loads user_config_systemcheck.py, falling back to default_config_systemcheck.py.