motion_sync/README.md

# motion_sync

...is a little bash script for rpi + a USB webcam that I wrote to upload motioneye vids and pics to you box account every minute for security reasons. 

The idea behind it is that a thief / malicious person might be knowledgeable of the pi / motioneye setup and either cut the power to the premise before breaking in 
or go to the setup pi / webcam and disconnect it from power / disconnect the USB webcam or the LAN cable...

With my script even if a break-in happens, the thief / malicious person will be captured and if properly "UPS-ed" (pi+router) have no chance in "not" getting captures
uploaded to cloud storage.

I use motioneye because is open source and free, and lightweight, so can run on a pi.

I use Box because the free account gives us 10GB

I use a Pi because it is cheap and has WiFi and LAN and USB, so a cheap WebCam will do.

It works in conjuction with motioneye and with an rclone box service I also created in /etc/systemd/user/rclone-box.service 

## Getting started

Install motioneye, create a box account and do not use it for anything else.

Install rclone on the pi and connect it to Box (google it)

Once Motioneye is working and saving to /var/lib/motioneye create a systemd service that keeps Box rclone alive:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user

nano ~/.config/systemd/user/rclone-box.service
'''
[Unit]
Description=Rclone Box Mount
Documentation=man:rclone(1)
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=notify
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount box: %h/box \
  --config %h/.config/rclone/rclone.conf \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --vfs-cache-max-size 10G \
  --vfs-cache-max-age 24h \
  --dir-cache-time 72h \
  --allow-other \
  --umask 022
ExecStop=/bin/fuermount -u %h/box
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10s

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
'''
Finally, create 2 crontab entries, one to keep the Box OAuth token alive and one to run my script every minute:

sudo crontab -e

# Keep Box OAuth token alive (runs weekly, e.g., every Sunday at 3 AM)
0 3 * * 0 rclone lsd box: >/dev/null 2>&1

# Sync motion recordings and cleanup (runs every minute)
* * * * * /home/$USER/sync_motion.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

My script does the following for you:

# 1. Ensures log directory exists

# 2. Keeps log file under ~5 MB by trimming it when it gets too large

# 3. Remuxes MKV to MP4 (so the videos work on the pi motioneye webserver)

# 4. Local cleanup (Batch Trim down to 9GB)

# 5. Syncs to BOX with rclone (Reflects local 9GB state & deletes missing remote files)