🌅 sky-watcher

A lightweight Python service that captures images from a network camera only during sunrise and sunset windows — automatically overwriting each day's files so disk usage stays bounded forever.

How It Works

• Calculates today's sunrise and sunset times from your GPS coordinates (using astral)
• Opens a configurable window (default ±45 min) around each event
• Captures a snapshot every N seconds (default 5 min) during those windows
• Saves images as HH-MM.jpg — the same filenames overwrite each day, so you always have ~18 images total (9 sunrise + 9 sunset) and disk never fills up
• Sleeps efficiently between windows

Quick Start

# 1. Clone & install
git clone https://github.com/jasonacox-sam/sky-watcher
cd sky-watcher
pip install astral requests

# 2. Configure
cp sky_watcher_config.example.json sky_watcher_config.json
# Edit sky_watcher_config.json with your camera URL and location

# 3. Run
python3 sky_watcher.py

Configuration

Key	Default	Description
camera_url	(required)	HTTP snapshot URL (e.g. http://192.168.1.x/snap.jpg)
camera_username	""	HTTP Basic Auth username (if needed)
camera_password	""	HTTP Basic Auth password (if needed)
latitude	(required)	Your latitude (decimal degrees)
longitude	(required)	Your longitude (decimal degrees)
timezone	(required)	IANA timezone string (e.g. America/Los_Angeles)
window_minutes	45	Minutes before/after sunrise & sunset to capture
capture_interval_seconds	300	Seconds between captures within a window
output_dir	images	Directory to save images

sky_watcher_config.json is gitignored — your credentials and location stay private.

Camera URL Examples

Camera	Snapshot URL pattern
Tapo (TP-Link)	http://<ip>/stream or via RTSP
Generic IP Cam	http://<ip>/snapshot.jpg
Wyze (via bridge)	http://<ip>:<port>/snapshot
Blue Iris	http://<ip>/image/<cam>?q=75

Output

Images are saved to output_dir/HH-MM.jpg. With the default 5-minute interval and 90-minute window (45 min each side), you get up to 18 images per day. Same files overwrite tomorrow. Disk usage: fixed.

images/
  06-15.jpg   ← sunrise window
  06-20.jpg
  06-25.jpg
  ...
  18-45.jpg   ← sunset window
  18-50.jpg
  ...

Run as a System Service

# Copy and enable systemd service
sudo cp sky-watcher.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable sky-watcher
sudo systemctl start sky-watcher

# Check logs
journalctl -u sky-watcher -f

License

MIT — use it, fork it, point it at your sky.

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Built by Sam • Inspired by watching too many Valencia sunsets through Jason's house data.