“Via Telegram, get apprised of every attempt to lock or unlock the door w/ surveillance footage by 5MP night vision camera or USB webcam.
For a long time, I had been contemplating installing a security system for my balcony garden door with ample features to grant permission to lock or unlock the door to anyone but me. Thus, I decided to create this project that suffices my balcony garden seclusion with a fingerprint sensor and lets me check its status by sending me surveillance footage by a night vision camera or a USB webcam.
Since Telegram is a cross-platform cloud-based messaging service compatible with iOS and Android, I decided to create a Telegram bot to manage my security system on disparate devices easily. In Telegram, it is effortless to create bots with a command list unalike any other messaging application, which are special accounts that do not require an additional phone number to set up. IoT Surveillance System, the Telegram bot I created for this project, allows me to change the camera type option, request surveillance footage, and display the entry log with these commands:
enable_night_vision
disable_night_vision
status_check
last_access
entry_log
To fetch and transfer data via the Telegram bot, I developed a PHP web application (outgoing) that gets updated from the Telegram Bot API, sends surveillance footage to the bot, and saves information to the database.
When the fingerprint sensor detects a fingerprint (enrolled or unmatched), I programmed my Raspberry Pi to capture an image and record a video with the selected camera type (night vision camera or USB webcam) to send them to the bot as surveillance footage via the web application. Also, it sends surveillance footage when directly requested by the bot:
access
failed
requested
Finally, I added an electromagnetic lock to lock or unlock the door if the fingerprint sensor detects an enrolled fingerprint.”