How to Install plexWatch on Ubuntu (14.04+ Trusty Tahr)

This guide will show you how to install and configure plex watch, Plex watch will Notify and Log ‘Now Playing’ and ‘Watched’ content from a Plex Media Server + ‘Recently Added’ (…and more)

What it does

• notify when a user starts watching a video
• notify when a user stops watching a video
• notify when a user pauses watching a video
• notify when a user resumes watching a video
• notify on recently added content to a PMS server
• notifies via email, prowl, pushover, growl, twitter, boxcar, pushbullet, GNTP and/or a log file
• enable/disable notifications per provider & per notification type (start, stop, paush, resume, recently added)
• backed by a SQLite DB (for state and history)
• CLI to query watched videos, videos being watched and stats on time watched per user
• Limit output per user or exclude users

Perl Requirements

• LWP::UserAgent
• XML::Simple
• DBI
• Time::Duration;
• Time::ParseDate;
• JSON

Install

Download plexWatch.pl and config.pl-dist to /opt/plexWatch/

• WGET

sudo wget -P /opt/plexWatch/ https://raw.github.com/ljunkie/plexWatch/master/plexWatch.pl

sudo wget -P /opt/plexWatch/ https://raw.github.com/ljunkie/plexWatch/master/config.pl-dist

• CURL

sudo mkdir -p /opt/plexWatch/

sudo curl https://raw.github.com/ljunkie/plexWatch/master/plexWatch.pl -o /opt/plexWatch/plexWatch.pl

sudo curl https://raw.github.com/ljunkie/plexWatch/master/config.pl-dist -o /opt/plexWatch/config.pl-dist

Now lets change the Permission of the files

sudo chmod 777 /opt/plexWatch && sudo chmod 755 /opt/plexWatch/plexWatch.pl

sudo cp /opt/plexWatch/config.pl-dist /opt/plexWatch/config.pl

Lets edit the PlexWatch configuration file

sudo nano /opt/plexWatch/config.pl

$server = 'localhost';   ## IP of PMS - or localhost
$port   = 32400;         ## port of PMS
$notify_started = 1;   ## notify when a stream is started (first play)
$notify_stopped = 1;   ## notify when a stream is stopped

$notify = {...
* to enable a provider, i.e. file, prowl, pushover
set 'enabled' => 1, under selected provider
* Prowl     : 'apikey' required
* Pushover  : 'token' and 'user' required
* Growl     : 'script' required :: GrowlNotify from http://growl.info/downloads (GNTP replaces this)
* twitter   : 'consumer_key', 'consumer_secret', 'access_token', 'access_token_secret' required
* boxcar    : 'email' required
* pushover  : 'apikey' and 'device' required
* GNTP      : 'server', 'port' required. 'password' optional. You must allow network notifications on the Growl Server

Now lets install some of the perl requirements

sudo apt-get install libwww-perl libxml-simple-perl libtime-duration-perl libtime-modules-perl libdbd-sqlite3-perl perl-doc libjson-perl

run the script manually to verify it works: /opt/plexWatch/plexWatch.pl

• start video(s)
• /opt/plexWatch/plexWatch.pl
• stop video(s)
• /opt/plexWatch/plexWatch.pl

setup crontab to run the script every minute

sudo nano /etc/crontab

lets add

* * * * * YOUR_USERNAME /opt/plexWatch/plexWatch.pl

Now its setup and ready to go, now lets add some notifications

Supported Push Notifications

• Email
• https://pushover.net
• https://prowlapp.com
• http://growl.info/ (via GrowlNotify @ http://growl.info/downloads#generaldownloads)
• https://twitter.com/ (create a new app @ https://dev.twitter.com/apps)
• https://boxcar.io/ & boxcar V2
• https://pushbullet.com
• SNARL/GROWL: GNTP notifications supported. Anything that uses GNTP should work
• External Scripts: home automation, pause download clients, etc (rudimentary plugins)

Twitter setup

• create a new app @ https://dev.twitter.com/apps
• click “Create New App”
  • Name: unique name for for your app
  • Description: fill something in…
  • Website: you need some valid website..
  • (read) and accept terms
  • click “Create you Twitter Application”
• click “Modify app permission” under the Details Tab
  • change to Read and Write
  • update settings
• click the “API keys” tab
  • click “create my access token”
  • click “Test OAuth” button to view the required API keys need for config.pl
• Edit the config.pl
  • enable notification for twitter in config.pl
  • enter in the required keys, secrets and tokens