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Butterfly PI - Maker Version of a Security Cam

Let Raspberry PI turn into a security cam that you can watch live and control from your mobile

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Butterfly PI is the maker version of security cams like nestcam, dropcam, etc. You can control and watch live your Raspberry PI from your mobile phone. It can be used as a security cam and also can be used for broadcasting events live. Butterfly PI is fully integrated with Butterfly TV.

There is a blog post(goo.gl/4SEHe5) that shows how to build the camera.

If you just want to use the camera, let me assemble camera for you (ahmetmermerkaya@gmail.com)


  • 1 × Android Phone(4.0 or higher)
  • 1 × Raspberry PI 2
  • 1 × Raspberry Camera Module
  • 1 × Power Adapter 5V – 1A with micro USB output
  • 1 × USB Audio Adapter(Optional)

View all 6 components

  • 1
    Step 1

    Build a personal live streaming camera with Raspberry PI to watch on mobile

    Today, we are going to let Raspberry PI turn into a remote security cam that we can control and watch live anywhere on the planet with using our mobile phone. This is the maker version of dropcam, nestcam, etc. We call it Butterfly PI.

    To make things simple, we prepare a step by step guide so that any maker or developer can build his/her own remote security camera. Btw, if you just to try the your own camera, let us assemble the camera for you. Keep in touch contact@butterflytv.net Here is the outline, first, we need to make the mobile app ready for camera. Secondly, build the camera. Let me tell what we have needed for building the camera in advance.

    • Android Phone(4.0 or higher)
    • Raspberry PI 2
    • Raspberry Camera Module
    • Power Adapter 5V – 1A with micro USB output
    • USB Audio Adapter(Optional)
    • USB Wi-Fi dongle(Raspberry PI 2 compatible) or Ethernet Cable

    Let’s start.

    Make Mobile Phone Ready

    • Download and install Butterfly TV from Google Play. Butterfly TV is integrated with our camera
    • Login to Butterfly TV and then click the My Butterfly PIs item in the menudevice-2015-06-20-165047
    • You should see the below screen when you first open the Butterfly PIs’ screen.

    device-2015-06-20-170258

    • Click ”Add a new Butterfly PI” item in the menu as shown below.

    device-2015-06-20-170312

    • Write your camera name([DeviceName]) and secret code([SecretCode]) to the dialog. You can write anything you want. Just don’t forget the name and secret code. We will need these values to authenticate Raspberry PI. We write “Balboa” for both device name and security code.

    device-2015-06-20-170333

    • After you click OK, you should see your Butterfly PI as offline like below

    device-2015-06-20-170404

    Build the camera

    • We just need to edit a file in raspberry. Plug the power adapter and if you have keyboard and screen plug them as well (if you don’t have, you need to connect via ssh(explained below)) and edit /home/pi/startup/startup.sh. Change the line
    java -jar /home/pi/butterflypi.jar [DeviceName] [SecretCode] &

    [DeviceName] and [SecretCode] are the parameters when you used registering the Butterfly PI on android app at step 5 on previous section.(Don’t remove &) – Please keep in mind that secret code is a kind of the password for your camera. – 5. (Optional) if you don’t need to connect via ssh, skip this part: You need to know the ip address of the raspberry. You can learn it from your modem interface. After you learn ip address use ssh like below

    ssh pi@IP_ADDRESS_OF_RASPBERRY_PI

    Password is “butterflypi”. If you still don’t know how to connect, try this way . Keep in mind that after you perform last way and edit the startup.sh, you need to restore the cmdline.txt file. 6. (Optional) If you try to record sound as well, please plug a USB audio adapter to Raspberry PI. Like this one or that one.

    • We are almost done. You need to connect to Raspberry to network via wi-fi or cable. If you use wi-fi, consider buying one of them. To learn how to configure wi-fi you can visit here. If you use an ethernet cable, just plug into Raspberry PI. Make sure that ethernet cable or wi-fi connection is connected to internet.
    • If you wish you can also put Raspberry PI to a case and it is better if you use a case with fan or use heatsink to get better performance. Lastly, Here are some Butterfly PI’s with different cases

    20150620_18243811252597_10153071052043295_9084922841044340559_n11709616_10153071051993295_3161979782875545089_n

    • Plug the power adapter to raspberry and let it boot. When it is connected to network. Your camera gets online on Butterfly TV.
    • Click start button and wait then the screen becomes like below. To watch it just click the Play button.

    device-2015-06-20-183831

    • So you have a mobile app controlled security cam, you can mount Butterfly PI anywhere you want. You can use this case to make mounting easy.

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Discussions

Ahmet Oğuz Mermerkaya wrote 08/20/2015 at 11:14 point

Yeah controlling side is implemented in java by using websockets and ffmpeg is used in streaming the video. 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Daniel Naranjo wrote 08/20/2015 at 17:02 point

why no use python? or something, newest and easy to run.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Ahmet Oğuz Mermerkaya wrote 08/20/2015 at 18:10 point

At first glance, i had an experience in java and thought can do it faster in java. But there is no reason to not migrate to python so yeah if i can have some time, i will migrate it to python. 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Daniel Naranjo wrote 08/18/2015 at 18:37 point

I like this idea, shame it was developed java :(

  Are you sure? yes | no

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