Today I was inspired by this tweet after which I fell into this rabbit hole to create an efficient recorder for your Screen, System audio, and Mic.

After trying to implement this using Claude in Swift I completely failed (see folder swift-version) so I decided to create a simpler version (also using Claude) in Node.js

Efficient Recorder (that's the goal, at least)

Goal: Create the most battery-life friendly recorder to stream video/screen/mic/system-audio to any S3-compatible cloud-storage-service of choice, open source.

Features

• Captures Mic audio, screenshots, and webcam photos at configurable fps
• For audio, uses low-energy volume detection to determine what to record
• Streams all data to configurable S3 endpoint (Can also use your own server using MinIO)

I really want this to exist, but won't pursue it for now. This repo serves as an example. Open to contributors! DM me

After the hackernews thread, I saw there are a couple other similar projects in various levels of completion (but none focuses on battery):

• Screenpipe https://github.com/mediar-ai/screenpipe
• Memento https://github.com/apirrone/Memento
• Rem https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/rem

Update: Also, I made a spin-off from this called yaptabber - it only records when you talk

Update January 10, 2025: I made a ip-camera streamer and this is super storage and battery efficient: https://github.com/janwilmake/ip-camera-to-s3-macos

Prerequisites

Required Software

This package requires:

• SoX (Sound eXchange) for audio recording

  • Linux: sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-all
  • MacOS: brew install sox
  • Windows: Download from SourceForge

• Webcam capture tools

  • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install fswebcam
  • Arch Linux: sudo pamac build fswebcam
  • MacOS: brew install imagesnap
  • Windows: Standalone exe included in node-webcam

S3 Configuration

You'll need:

• S3-compatible storage endpoint
• Access key
• Secret key
• A bucket named "recordings" (or modify the code to use a different bucket name)

Usage

Run the recorder using npx:

npx efficient-recorder \
  --endpoint YOUR_S3_ENDPOINT \
  --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY \
  --secret YOUR_SECRET_KEY \
  --enable-screenshot \
  --screenshot-interval 5000 \
  --enable-webcam \
  --webcam-interval 3000 \
  --image-quality 80

Command Line Options

• --endpoint: Your S3-compatible storage endpoint URL
• --key: Your AWS/S3 access key
• --secret: Your AWS/S3 secret key
• --enable-screenshot: Enable screenshot capture
• --screenshot-interval: Interval between screenshots (ms)
• --enable-webcam: Enable webcam capture
• --webcam-interval: Interval between webcam captures (ms)
• --webcam-device: Specify webcam device (optional)
• --image-quality: Image quality for webcam/screenshots (1-100)

How It Works

1. Audio Monitoring

   • Continuous low-quality audio monitoring
   • Switches to high-quality recording when speech is detected
   • Automatic recording start and stop based on sound levels

2. Screenshot Capture

   • Captures screenshots at specified intervals
   • Immediate upload to S3
   • Configurable capture frequency

3. Webcam Capture

   • Captures webcam images at specified intervals
   • Supports multiple webcam devices
   • Immediate upload to S3

4. Efficient Upload

   • Queued upload processing
   • Concurrent uploads with multi-part support
   • Minimal system resource overhead

Multimedia Specifications

Audio

• Monitoring: 8kHz, Mono
• Recording: 44.1kHz, Stereo
• Format: WAV (16-bit PCM)

Screenshots

• Captured at system screen resolution
• Uploaded as PNG

Webcam

• Resolution: 1280x720
• Format: JPEG
• Configurable quality

Troubleshooting

1. "Command not found: rec"

   • Ensure SoX is installed correctly
   • Verify SoX is in your system PATH

2. S3 Upload Issues

   • Check S3 credentials
   • Verify bucket exists and write permissions are granted

3. No Audio/Video Input

   • Check system input devices
   • Verify microphone and webcam permissions

License

MIT License