homebridge [rpi camera] ffmpeg exited with code 1

Homebridge, Raspberry Pi camera, HomeKit

Installing homebridge on Raspberry Pi seems to be easy if we follow tutorials like nfarina/homebridge: HomeKit support for the impatient and Running Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi · nfarina/homebridge Wiki.

But, once we finish all the processes and setup systemd configuration, then hit this command to run homebridge in background.

$ sudo systemctl start homebridge.service

Then, some of you may encounter error like this,

And we use following command to check the status of service.

$ sudo systemctl status home-assistant@homeassistant.service

We may see error like this,

[rpi camera] ffmpeg exited with code 1

How to fix this error is really simple. If we have followed tutorials mentioned above, then we already created a user homebridge. 

Run the following command to add user homebridge to the video group.

$ sudo usermod -a -G video homebridge

 then, restart homebridge.

If homebridge failss even earlier, take a look at the location of homebridge binary. In /etc/systemd/system/homebridge.service in tutorial, it says /usr/local/bin/homebridge, but, somehow, it is located in /usr/bin/homebridge in my case. So, I modified it in /etc/systemd/system/homebridge.service

[Unit]

Description=Node.js HomeKit Server

After=syslog.target network-online.target

[Service]

Type=simple

User=homebridge

EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/homebridge

# Adapt this to your specific setup (could be /usr/bin/homebridge)

# See comments below for more information

#ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/homebridge $HOMEBRIDGE_OPTS

ExecStart=/usr/bin/homebridge $HOMEBRIDGE_OPTS

Restart=on-failure

RestartSec=10

KillMode=process

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

References

- nfarina/homebridge: HomeKit support for the impatient

- Running Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi · nfarina/homebridge Wiki.

- usermod(8): modify user account - Linux man page