Lahardan Camera Recording System

A Celery-based RTSP camera recording system that captures 5-minute video chunks from multiple cameras, uploads them to S3, and automatically cleans up old recordings.

Features

• Multi-camera recording — supports multiple RTSP cameras with configurable recording intervals
• Automatic S3 upload — uploads recordings to AWS S3 with retry logic and proper metadata
• Retention management — daily cleanup task removes old recordings from both local storage and S3
• Secure credentials — camera and AWS credentials managed via environment variables, never stored in code
• Remote deployment — helper script for managing remote recording servers

Architecture

┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐
│  RTSP Cam 1 │────▶│   Celery     │────▶│  AWS S3     │
│  RTSP Cam N │────▶│   Worker     │────▶│  Bucket     │
└─────────────┘     └──────────────┘     └─────────────┘
                         │
                    ┌────▼─────┐
                    │  Celery  │
                    │   Beat   │
                    └──────────┘

Storage Structure

Local:        recordings/YYYY-MM-DD/camera_name/HH-MM-SS.mp4
S3:           s3://bucket/YYYY-MM-DD/camera_name/HH-MM-SS.mp4

Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.13+
• FFmpeg
• Redis (Celery broker)
• AWS account with S3 bucket

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone [email protected]:ronoc/lahardan.git
cd lahardan

# Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

1. Copy environment template:

   cp .env.example .env

2. Set camera credentials in .env:

   CAMERA_USER=admin
   CAMERA_PASS=your_camera_password
   AWS_PROFILE=chickencoop

3. Configure AWS credentials:

   aws configure --profile chickencoop

   Or add to ~/.aws/credentials:

   [chickencoop]
   aws_access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
   aws_secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_KEY

4. Edit cameras.yaml:

   • Set your S3 bucket name
   • Add your camera host IPs
   • Configure retention days

IAM Policy

The AWS user needs permission to write to the S3 bucket:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name",
                "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Running

Start Celery Worker and Beat

# Source environment variables
set -a; source .env; set +a

# Start worker (handles recording and upload tasks)
celery -A tasks worker --loglevel=info --concurrency=10

# Start beat (schedules periodic tasks)
celery -A tasks beat --loglevel=info

Using the Deploy Script

For remote server management:

./deploy.sh sync     # Copy files to remote server
./deploy.sh restart  # Start worker + beat in background
./deploy.sh status   # Check running processes
./deploy.sh stop     # Stop all Celery processes

Tasks

Task	Schedule	Description
record_chunk	Every 5 min per camera	Records 5-minute RTSP chunks via FFmpeg
upload_chunk	Triggered by record	Uploads successful recordings to S3
cleanup_old_recordings	Every 24 hours	Deletes local + S3 recordings older than retention period

Configuration

cameras.yaml

output_dir: "./recordings"
retention_days: 30  # Delete recordings older than 30 days

s3:
  bucket: "your-bucket-name"
  region: "eu-west-1"
  profile: "chickencoop"
  prefix: ""
  delete_after_upload: false

cameras:
  - name: "front_door"
    host: "192.168.1.100"
  - name: "backyard"
    host: "192.168.1.101"

Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
CAMERA_USER	RTSP camera username	admin
CAMERA_PASS	RTSP camera password	(required)
AWS_PROFILE	AWS CLI profile name	chickencoop

Monitoring

# Check Celery status
celery -A tasks inspect active

# View recent tasks
celery -A tasks inspect reserved

# Check disk usage
du -sh recordings/

License

MIT License - Copyright (c) 2026 Conor Curran