Problem with crontab -e. Does not saving photos using autorun

Question

Does not save photos using auto-launch in crontab. I use Python 3 or raspistill, they work well for photos when a monitor is connected.

    #!/usr/bin/python3
    # BEFORE USING THIS SCRIPT.
    # mkdir ~/timelapse 
    # mkdir ~/timelapse/completed
    # this file should live in ~/timelapse and is run with command "python3 ~/timelapse/timelapse.py
    
    import time
    from picamera import PiCamera
    from os import system
    
    camera = PiCamera()
    camera.resolution = (1920, 1080)
    
    SleepTimeL = 1
    FrameCount = 0
    FrameStop = 240
    
    WAIT = int(FrameStop)*int(SleepTimeL)/60
    
    print('Photography will take approximately ' + str(WAIT) + ' minutes')
    print('Taking photos now')
    while (FrameCount < FrameStop):
        print('Picture:' + str(FrameCount) + ' of ' + str(FrameStop))
        camera.capture('image' + str(FrameCount).zfill(4) + '.jpg')
        time.sleep(SleepTimeL);
        FrameCount = FrameCount + 1
    print('done')

and Bash script

#!/bin/bash

DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M")

raspistill -o /home/pi/camera/$DATE.jpg

I crate mkdir timelapse, cd ./timelapse; mkdir and file camera.sh After at Crontab, I did two different things not at same time. The first one I used: @reboot python3 /home/pi/timelapse/timelape.py & . The first one I used the second: * * * * * /home/pi/camera.sh 2>&1 . Both cases wrote crontab: installing new crontab. Turn off, turn on only with power without monitor. I thought they worked, the green light flashed.

Whether to add to the script to store photos?

Answer 1

It's been a while since I've used raspistill, but this may work as a cron job:

Create your bash script at /home/pi/camera.sh as follows:

#!/bin/bash
DATE=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H%M")
/usr/bin/raspistill -o /home/pi/camera/$DATE.jpg

Be sure to mark it as executable :

chmod a+x /home/pi/camera.sh

Add the following line to your crontab (crontab -e):

* * * * *  /home/pi/camera.sh 2> /home/pi/camera/cronerrors.txt

This will run the cron job once per minute. If you want to use other schedules, you can find help from the crontab guru. The redirect here is different: only stderr is redirected.

Please verify this works (the bash script as a cron job), or post the contents of /home/pi/camera/cronerrors.txt otherwise. Once we've got this working, we can take on the Python script if you'd like.

Answer 2

You can create a service to run shell script, instead of @reboot in crontab.

Like this

https://github.com/mohdismailj/fancontrol/blob/main/fancontrol.service