IEEE - 49239

Movable Surveillance Camera using IoT and

Raspberry Pi
Bandi Narasimha Rao Reddy Sudheer Mohan Aditya Sadhanala
Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and
Communications Communications Communications
NIT Warangal, India RGUKT Nuzvid, India RGUKT Nuzvid, India
bnarasimha@student.nitw.ac.in n151019@rguktn.nic.in s.mohanaditya@gmail.co

Veerababu Tibirisettti Sairam Muggulla

Department of Electronics and Department of Electronics and
Communications Communications
RGUKT Nuzvid, India RGUKT Nuzvid, India
tvb819@gmail.com muggullasairam@gamil.com

Abstract— Surveillance is the one major thing that anyone wants
and required to protect their things or monitor their places. In
this paper, we proposed a movable surveillance camera using
Raspberry Pi and Webcam. The movement of the proposed
surveillance camera can be controlled by using the designed web
browser and python scripting language. It can cover a wide
area. The proposed architecture is portable and movable. It is
extensively used in high-risk prone areas to humans and also
used in the industries for continuous monitoring for seamless
working machinery. The movement of the camera can be done
by using a Robot, which is driven by the motor driver L298N
module integrated with the circuit. The data collected by the
proposed movable surveillance camera is more superior than
the conventional CCTV Cameras, Drone Cameras, and Camera
Traps. The problem with the drone camera is very less coverage
area. In forest areas, the camera traps are replaced by the
proposed surveillance camera. It can be used for capturing
images in dark areas as it uses LED’s. SSH Protocol is used for
sending the captured images.
Keywords— Surveillance Camera, CCTV Camera, Drone
Camera, Motor Driver, Robot, SSH Protocol.
I. INTRODUCTION
The designed movable surveillance cameras can be used
to monitor the places even the human cannot enter and it saves
human life. It can be moved to any place using the motor
driver. It can be used for detecting the various animals in the
forest area. Continuous monitoring can be done by using the
web browser. Surveillance plays a key role nowadays as
security is one of the crucial parameters [1-4]. In this paper,
we proposed a movable camera that captures images and
records the video by moving in various directions and places.
The webcam is used in this architecture as a surveillance
camera. The direction of the motor can be controlled using the
designed web browser. The live feeding can be done by using
the IP address in any web browser, which is generated by the
Wi-Fi module incorporated in the raspberry Pi. It can be used
in remote areas. For capturing the images and recording the
videos a webcam is embedded in the design. Hence, it reduces
cost and complexity.
The proposed system can move to various locations.
Hence, a significant amount of cost of the system reduces, as
it covers the wider area using a single web camera. The
movement of the robot and the capturing of images using
webcam can be done by using the python scripting language.
Conventional CCTV cameras cover a very small area, as these
are static in nature and are fixed at a particular location and
hence applications are limited.
A. Importance of Movable Cameras at Public and
Workplace
Generally, CCTV cameras are made up of multiple
cameras, extensively used for security of banks, houses,
businesses, and stores. CCTV cameras can be both wired or
wireless [5-6]. The effective monitoring system for public
safety and catching criminals is a CCTV monitoring system
[7-8]. Establishing a CCTV camera for an extended area is
quite complex and expensive. Hence, these are
complemented by the patrolling of security persons. CCTV
was able to record up to an extent of region and it was
stationary as it was fixed in a specific location, where we
want to record. To cover more areas, we fix it in some specific
angles and positions, so that it can record by covering the
maximum portion of an area. Whatever we can do with that,
the major drawback is it was a closed-circuit appliance and
we can monitor only within the range. Establishing a CCTV
system for an extended area is quite complex and expensive.
If we want to extend that range, it needs more equipment and
costs more. Or if we want to fix more cameras to surveil the
entire place, this also deserves much expenditure. There are
many CC cameras with motion tracking also. Criminals can
vandalize the security cameras by sprinkling spray on the
cameras or by sticking gum on it. They can even change the
direction of the monitoring area of the camera.
The general criticism from the public about conventional
CCTV cameras is basically these are expensive and are fixed
at a particular location, hence the position of the camera can
not be changed easily. Without professional assistance
cabling and installation of security cameras is a very difficult
task and it demands skilled persons. Sending the signal to the
receiver using wireless can be done by transmitting a fixed
frequency signal. Atmospheric noise such as solar, cosmic,
lighting and electrical noise such as ignition of the motor
causes significant disturbances in the frequency, which
severely effects the image quality at the receiver. The
degraded image requires expert help to recover the images
and videos, which are distorted. In the case of the wired

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 IEEE - 49239
system, it requires an external circuit for connecting the
transmitter to the receiver for sending images and videos. On
the other hand, the wireless versions or the wired version
CCTV’s connected through the network are hackable. This
causes a higher risk of hackers. Hence, it creates a privacy
issue. CCTV footage of women may distribute over the
internet. Hackers can virtually hack the system when
connected to a network. On the other hand, the wireless
versions or the wired CCTVs connected through the network
are hackable.
B. Importance of Movable Camera in Forest Area
The conventional camera traps are immobile and these
camera traps are being damaged by the wildlife animals. But,
the proposed surveillance camera can move in all directions
of the forest and the direction of the robot can be changed by
a web browser. Hence, it reduces cost and complexity. The
proposed system reduces manual interference in the forest
area. When human researchers are not present, using this
movable camera we can capture the images of wildlife
animals. Using these cameras, police can easily identify the
smugglers and hunters in the forest area. Conventional
camera traps are used for estimating the wildlife animal
count. But, these camera traps are being destroyed by wildlife
animals. It enables the collection of globally endangered, rare
species and baseline survey of these species. It documents the
population change, presence, and abundance of wildlife
animals particularly in the case of habitat destruction and
deforestation. These help in creating awareness about the
effects of deforestation, smuggling of forest goods and
hunting of animals in collaboration with the NGO’s.
II. RELATED WORK
The data collected by the proposed movable surveillance
camera is more superior to the conventional camera traps and
it helps in ecological research. In recent times forests are
burning due to the increased percentage of greenhouse
gaseous. Amazon and Australia forests are burning in recent
times but, it is taking more time to identify the burning
portion of the forest. By using these movable cameras, we can
easily identify the burning area of the forest. All over the
world biologists using camera traps for wildlife population
density and biodiversity. The computer community has to
move towards the automatic challenges in the classification
of species using camera traps [9-14], but still, there are some
difficulties in classifying animals from one geographical
region to another. For automotive spices classification earlier
work was shown considerable results using camera traps [15],
but in further classification, these results is quite different
from one region to another and from one camera to another
[16] and observing the weather conditions in the forest area.
The proposed system is used for police for identifying the
thief, who is the smuggling of forest goods and doing
deforestation. The wildlife animals are in the endangered
zone due to deforestation. Hence, it used for creating a
sustainable environment. The live feeding can be done by
using the IP address in any web browser which is generated
by the Wi-Fi module incorporated in the raspberry Pi. It can
be used in remote areas. For estimating the wildlife animal
count in the forest area. The traffic police can control the
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traffic remotely by moving the proposed surveillance camera
in that highly dense area. The density of the undomesticated
animals can be determined using the proposed system. The
problem with a conventional camera trap is immobility.
Whenever the system uses a network for receiving the
images there is a chance for hackers to hack the captured data.
To extend the range of CCTVs and to overcome some
limitations of CCTVs, Quadcopters and Drones comes into
the picture. We can fly the Quadcopter by attaching a camera
on it to the place where we want to monitor and we can see
through the screen which is connected through remotely to
the camera mounted. So that we can extend the limitation of
range and since the quadcopter is dynamic, we can cover or
surveil more area. Drones are like advanced versions of
quadcopters. We can do better with drones and quadcopters
than CCTVs but, there are limitations for these also. The run
time of drones is very little as they run 40 – 50mins for long
with one fully charged battery. So, it needs to constantly
change the batteries. The important con with the drone
camera is privacy invasion. The most important factor, while
considering the usage of drone cameras is privacy. The
operator is able to trespass the property using the drone
camera and it leads to distressing and freighting. People can
spy into your belongings without noticing.
We can’t operate it from the extent of the area outside the
drones operation limit/ range. To overcome the major reason
which is the range and extent of operation of the vehicle, there
we need a network that has a large area of communication so
that we can access from anywhere. The second major reason
is the invasion of privacy. To overcome this, we need to
secure web protocols to communicate, send, or receive
signals from the sensors or to the actuators. Thereafter comes
the run time and durability of the vehicle or robot.
So, we made up a plan to overcome the cons of security/
surveillance robots and surveillance affiliates. We designed a
robot that can run over the internet, so that we can operate the
robot from anywhere in the place where we can connect to
the internet. This Surveillance Affiliate robot has a camera
mounted on its chassis and that sends the live feed of the
streaming to the webpage. We can control the vehicle from
the webpage directly. The major advancement in this project
is we can operate the vehicle by looking at the streaming
video which is coming from the camera associated with the
shrivelling vehicle.
In [17] the authors proposed a surveillance camera it
captures the images whenever the motion sensor detects the
motion in the monitored area and uploads the captured
images in the cloud. The authors in [18] proposed a
surveillance camera, which monitors the area continuously
and turns the light whenever it detects motion in the
monitored area it captures the screenshots. In [19] the authors
proposed different face reorganization algorithms fisher
faces, Eigenfaces and principle component analysis, etc. In
[20] the authors proposed a system with a raspberry pi and
gyroscope sensor which captures images whenever the sensor
detects the motion in the monitored area and sends the emails
with the captured images. In [21] authors proposed a
 IEEE - 49239

surveillance system using IoT, which sends images and circuit as internet-enabled. The coding used for the raspberry
videos to the cloud server when motion is detected. pi board is either embedded in C or Python. The supply
voltage required for the board is 5V with the current rating
As we know that the conventional CCTV cameras ranges from 700-1000 mA and the operating rating frequency
are functionally limited, as they monitor some specified area is 700 MHz. We can make the Raspberry Pi as full-pledged
only. Even we can fix them at some specific angles so that computer by incorporating an external SD card, Power
they can monitor some large areas, still, they are stationary. Supply, Keyboard, Mouse and Display with installed Linux
To monitor a larger area like a campus, commercial buildings Operating system.
we need to fix more cameras and this will cause more finance.
Hence, the proposed system is more suitable for covering
larger area.
The proposed surveillance can be operated from the
farther distance also and it reduces the surveillance, Internet
monitoring cost. Compared with drones it can run a long time.
Only authorized persons can authenticate, providing integrity
within the system.

III. IDEA AND METHODOLOGY

Internet of Things, IoT plays an important role in Webcam Motor
today’s life. IoT technology not only connects the devices to Raspberry pi driver
the internet, but it also provides the many facilities to users
ICL298N
like real-time monitoring, a platform to store data on cloud
data storage, etc. The interconnection of the everyday object
enables us to transmission and reception of data using
computing devices. This IoT based project idea with robot
chassis embedded with USB Webcam, DC motor drivers
connected using raspberry pi to build a robotic car. The USB
web camera is mounted on this robotic car and using which,
we can get live video and the interesting part here is we can
control the movement of the robotic car using the webpage SSH on laptop Power Supply
and hence, the angle of coverage of camera changes
accordingly.
Fig. 1. Block Diagram of Movable Surveillance Camera
A webpage builds in HTML, CSS was rendered with
Python flask and creates a host/server in that particular
system, Raspberry Pi in this case. The created webpage
contains the control operations for the vehicle. It also
retrieves some information about the vehicle’s data and
status. Here, we use the term MOTION, which is a package
that is installed in the Raspberry Pi and this allows us to get
the live feed using the web camera and for sending the
commands to Raspberry Pi using FLASK from the designed
webpage and used python scripting language to move the
robotic car. The webcam is used for live streaming of video
regarding its surroundings and these images, videos will be
sent to any device using the internet. The user monitors these
images using the monitor. The user can control the robotic
vehicle movement using the webpage.

The block diagram of the proposed system is shown

in fig. 1. The proposed architecture is cost-effective and
covers a wider area compared to conventional CCTV cameras
and drone cameras.
IV. HARDWARE AND SOFTWRAE ASPECTS
A. Raspberry Pi 3B
Raspberry Pi a credit card-sized computer, which
supports Linux based operating system [22] and is shown in
fig. 2. It has a built-in Wi-Fi module used for making the
Fig. 2. Raspberry Pi 3B
B. Motor Driver IC L298
The L298 based motor is used for driving, both stepper,
and DC motors and is shown in fig. 3. It has a 5V regulator
on board and used for supplying power to an external circuit.
It has the ability to control 4 DC motors. This motor driver
suits perfectly for projects related to mechatronics and
robotics. Its properties match perfectly for motor controlling
using Arduino Controller, Relays and switches.

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 IEEE - 49239
Fig. 3. L298N Motor Driver Module
C. SSH Protocol
Secured Shell (SSH) is a network communication
protocol, through which two computers can communicate
with each other in an encrypted manner. Remotely
controlling one computer is possible using another computer
and also sending of files in a secure manner can be done
using, this kind of tunnel. It uses public-key methods of
cryptography techniques for the secure transmission of a
message over a public network. At the transmitter side, we
use encryption, which encodes the message and decoding of
the message is done by the decryption method.
Fig. 4. Schematic of Proposed System
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The Schematic of the proposed system is shown in
fig 4 and the implementation of design can be divided into six
different steps and these are explained below.
STEP 1 – Setting up the Raspberry Pi
The Raspbian OS, which is recommended, was
installed in the microSD card and mounted to the raspberry
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pi board. Several packages and tools required were installed
on the raspberry pi by connecting the raspberry pi board to
the internet using ethernet cable or Wi-Fi.
Update and Upgrade the raspberry pi regularly.
Python, Flask, and Motion packages should be downloaded
and installed on the raspberry pi.
STEP 2 – Installing MOTION and setting up the Camera
The web camera is connected to the raspberry pi and
the MOTION package is installed on the raspberry pi to get
the live video feed from the camera connected to the
raspberry pi board.
For capturing the images and streaming the videos
through the internet is done by running the code for Webcam
in Raspberry Pi. Images will be compressed to .jpeg format
before transmitting to reduce the size. These transmitted
images will be received by the user by running the webcam
Client.
For receiving the images the user has to run a
webcam client-server and these are received in byte array
form. These are displayed on the monitor at certain images
per second, hence these appear like a video.
STEP 3 – Setting up the robot Car
The robotic car is set up with the Robotic Chassis,
Web Camera, Motor Driver Module, Raspberry Pi, Power
supply and the connections are made according to the
schematics.
STEP 4 – Designing the webpage for controlling
A webpage was designed in the HTML and CSS to
give the user control options of the robot in it. A python script
with controlling operations was written and was rendered
with the designed webpage using python FLASK methods.
STEP 5 – Setting up the static IP address for raspberry Pi
and forwarding the port
A static IP address was set to the raspberry pi and its
port should be forwarded through the port forwarding method
with the router so that we can access the server from the
internet and control the vehicle further.
STEP 6 – Running the flask server in Raspberry Pi
The web page rendered with the python script was
kept on the server and run the server. The prototype of the
movable surveillance camera is shown in fig 5. and captured
image is shown in in fig. 6.
Figure 7 shows the designed webpage for changing
the direction of the robotic circuit. So that, the surveillance
camera can capture the images in all directions. If the user
identifies any obstacle in the robot direction we can change
its direction.
 IEEE - 49239

functioning and reaction speed of operations controls. Video

stream is the quality of video streaming in the browser. The
operating rating is the user interface for control operation.
Power backup rating says the capacity of battery and runtime
of the vehicle.

Fig. 5. Prototye of Movable Surveillance Camera Fig. 7. Efficiency of the Proposed Camera

VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a raspberry Pi based
Surveillance camera using a webcam. As the transmission of
the images, videos can be done through the internet. Hence,
the coverage area of the camera is very high. It is more
superior to conventional CCTV Cameras, Drone Cameras,
and Camera Traps. Even, we can monitor the remote areas
and can control the action of the robotic circuit.

Eventhough the proposed system operated with secured

protocols in the network, the operation of untutored humans
and their errors may lead to vulnerability in the system and
can be hacked.

REFERENCES

Fig. 6. Captured Image
Fig. 7. Webpage for changing the Motor Direction
VI. EFFIEICENCY
Robot-SA has an overall rating of 96.33% when
calculated the parameters of Mobility, Speed, Accuracy,
Video Stream, Operating, Power Backup. The mobility
parameter says about the movements of the vehicle. Speed is
the vehicle fastness. Accuracy rating is about the task
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