# Automate a screen capture?

**URL:** https://discourse.nodered.org/t/automate-a-screen-capture/27433
**Category:** Dashboard
**Created:** [28 May 2020 14:35 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/automate-a-screen-capture/27433 "2020-05-28T14:35:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![PaulKeates1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@PaulKeates1](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/PaulKeates1)
#### Post date: [28 May 2020 16:49 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/automate-a-screen-capture/27433/2 "2020-05-28T16:49:43Z")

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Hi, honestly it depends on how much time / effort you want to spend on it plus the environment you're running on. Looks like Linux? If it is simply once a month is it worth automating?

I think you could cobble something together with a shell script for this...

Read and format the current date. Compare to requested date. If they match then run the script. scrot accepts command line params to delay X seconds first. You should also think about detecting a failure with the script so it can be executed manually. Maybe mail the snapshot to yourself as well?

Command-line mail is possible as well - including the snapshot as an attachment.

Doing this in Node-RED is also possible. We use it to automate complex web pages all the time. There is more needed (look at WDIO nodes) including Java / Selenium on a machine but can allow for much more sophisticated automation.

Cheers,

Paul

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