rpicam-phototimer gives you a smart way to capture photos for your timelapses. It is smart because it only takes pictures between the hours you specify and creates a useful folder structure. It is simple because it only depends on Python and rpicam-still both of which are normally already available.

Example videos:

1. modify the config.py to config the sleep time of the camera like the dart time. This is an example config.py file which stop taking photos between 20:00-4:00(+1)

config = {}
config["am"] = 400
config["pm"] = 2000

2. it will store the photo in ./timelapse/{year} folder with the format YYYY_MM_DD_HH_MM.jpg, for example 2026_01_18_11_12.jpg

3. if you are using ssh, better to use screen so it can run in background after you close the ssh connection, you can modify the interval in the start.sh, like 60 for 1minute interval, if less than 60, for now the photo name will conflict since it didn't include the seconds, so it will override the existing file

screen
chmod +x start.sh
./start.sh

To reconnect later type in screen -r.

4. after take the photo, use the ./killscreen to kill the script
5. use ./make-video.sh to make a time-lapse video based on the photo it took, it will generate the timelapse.mp4 under the root folder