Smart surveillance systems increasingly require precise time-based control to enable efficient monitoring, logging, and autonomous decision-making. In scenarios where continuous power is not guaranteed or environmental conditions vary, a persistent and accurate timekeeping solution becomes essential. This paper presents the development of a Real-Time Clock (RTC)-based event triggering system designed on the BeagleBone Black platform. The objective is to facilitate reliable and energy-efficient surveillance operations by leveraging a hardware RTC to drive time-sensitive tasks. A custom Linux device driver was implemented to interface the BeagleBone Black with an external RTC module, allowing for seamless integration of time-triggered events into the surveillance workflow. The proposed solution ensures that system operations such as scheduled image capture, event logging, and sensor activation occur at predefined intervals, even during system sleep or power cycles. The system architecture was tested in a prototype smart surveillance environment, validating the accuracy of RTC-generated interrupts, the responsiveness of the wake-up logic, and the integrity of time-stamped logs. Furthermore, the energy footprint of the platform was optimized by utilizing RTC alarms to wake the processor from low-power states only when required. Results indicate a substantial improvement in both power efficiency and time reliability compared to software-only scheduling approaches. This work demonstrates a scalable and adaptable foundation for integrating real-time responsiveness into embedded surveillance systems. The contributions hold promise for broader applications in areas such as environmental monitoring, industrial automation, and edge-based IoT security, where deterministic timing and low power operation are critical.

Keywords: BeagleBone Black, Real-Time Clock (RTC), Event Triggering, Smart Surveillance, Embedded Systems, Low-Power Scheduling