Web Viewer#

DynAIkonTrap web viewer is a HTTP server hosted on the device. This allows users to check on detections made, the camera’s field-of-view, the system log and even access a system shell all from an external laptop or mobile phone.

The web viewer allows you to check on your DynAIkonTrap in the wild if you provide a mobile hotspot connected to your DynAIkonTrap and your laptop/phone.

How Does It Work?#

The web viewer starts a HTTP server while DynAikonTrap is running on your RPi (port 9999). If you have a Wifi connection to your Raspberry Pi and you know it’s IP address, then you can access the web-page and browse the features available.

For information on how to find out your Raspberry Pi’s IP address, see here.

To access the web server, simply open a web browser on a laptop or phone connected to the same wifi network as the Raspberry Pi, and navigate to:

http://<rpi-ip-address>:9999/

This will display the web-viewer’s home page, as below.

Web viewer homepage

Checking the Field of View#

You can use the web viewer to check the camera’s field-of-view, this is especially useful when setting up the camera trap for the first time as it allows you to check where the camera is pointing and to check on any focus issues you may have.

To try this out, click the first button, labelled “Check the camera FOV”. This opens a new page, where an FOV snapshot is displayed as an image, you have an option to refresh this to check a new field of view.

Checking Observations#

You can also use the web viewer to check the observations made by the system to-date. To do this, click on the second button labelled “Check Observations”. This will serve you a file browser where you can view the observations made and sensor logs for each.

Checking the System Log#

The system log shows camera trap activity and can be very useful in troubleshooting or diagnosing system bugs. You can access the system log by clicking the button labelled “View the System Log”. This serves the log as a text file rendered by your browser.

Access the Shell#

One of the more powerful features of the web viewer is the ability to access a shell terminal over a web browser. This is handy as it can allow you to configure the system without opening a terminal-based ssh session. For example, you could use the shell to run dyntrap-config to configure system settings.

To try this out, click the last button, labelled “Access the Shell”. This opens a new page where the

Browser Support

Some web browsers may not support this shell access. We reccomend you try using a Firefox browser if you are having issues with shell access.

Troubleshooting#

If you’re having problems connecting to the web viewer here are a couple of things to try:

  • Make sure your Raspberry Pi and the machine running the web browser are connected to the same network. If you’re running a mobile hotspot, you can usually check which devices are connected to your hotspot in the settings (this can also be a quick way to find out the IP address of your Raspberry Pi!). For help setting up a new wifi network on a Raspberry Pi, see here.

  • Remember, DynAIkonTrap must be running for the web server to start. If you just booted up the Raspberry Pi, you will need to start DynAIkonTrap for things to work. There are methods to force programs to start on-boot of the Raspberry Pi (see here) and we hope to more streamlined support for this in the future.