RasPipC - Cameras on your TV made Easy.

[nayr]

@pal251, I might need a pi3 with the issues people have been seeing so far.. leme get the first release out and then I can focus on getting the pi3 up and going.

@stoney7713, those are awesome..

@horseflesh, a Huisun woulda saved me alot of money and effort.. but its not usable with the OpenALPR as it requires an MJPEG feed and Huisun will only give you an h264 stream.. popular camera yes, but to get h264 support in OpenALPR requires a commercial license @ ~$50/mo (per camera), so might as well spend a lil bit more money and get a better camera.

I've already got my LPR cam up, I kinda hijacked this thread: https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/516-Dedicated-License-Plate-Cam-project/

I need to code a database backend and webui for it, was going to take what I've learned here and make a MEAN Stack app for that too.. but I wont even begin on that until I have this released.

 

[horseflesh]

Thanks for the update, that makes sense. Looking forward to seeing your progress. I am sure we'll have a thread to talk about camera choices before long!

 

[bob2701]

@nayr, any idea when you will have the first release out??

 

[arri]

@nayr, I was unable to locate the "release image" files you reference in the quick install guide. Instead I downloaded a fresh Raspbian Jessie Lite and followed your Raspbian Install Guide which appeared to go fine.
Forever starts up (as long as it is run from the raspipc directory, duh) and I can browse the webserver, set up cameras etc. My h264 camera streams are sourced from the same IP and port, with a unique address thereafter because they are served from a Unifi NVR rather than the individual cameras. Nevertheless, raspipc doesn't want to connect to them giving the following message:

starting camera offscreen: undefined (undefined)
exited: 2
trying to restart: rtsp://10.14.54.8:7447/e6ac1bd6-377d-3ee0-8620-2fa1220ced7c_1
starting camera offscreen: undefined (undefined)
exited: 2

Omxplayer never seems to start under the raspipc api.js function omxProccess, although running it from the command line with the following works fine:

$ omxplayer -o hdmi rtsp://10.14.54.8:7447/e6ac1bd6-377d-3ee0-8620-2fa1220ced7c_1
Video codec omx-h264 width 720 height 400 profile 77 fps 15.000000
Audio codec aac channels 1 samplerate 11025 bitspersample 16
Subtitle count: 0, state: off, index: 1, delay: 0
V:PortSettingsChanged: 720x400@15.00 interlace:0 deinterlace:0 anaglyph:0 par:0.99 display:0 layer:0 alpha:255 aspectMode:0

When you suggest "disable audio in config," which config file does one use to do so? I verified that the "configure camera" screen in raspipc has "none" selected in the audio output drop down.

BTW, I noticed that after setting up four cameras and applying them to a layout that the log tested those four cameras. However, after deleting three of the cameras and applying the layout to a single camera view, the log continued to work against the four cameras instead of a single one. Not sure if that is the intended behavior, after a reboot it switched to only attempting to connect to the single remaining camera as expected.

I really like the concept of this system as it fills a niche Unifi has failed to address for me. Please advise how I might help with your development and troubleshooting further.

arri

 

[mahockey]

Christ, OP this is just brilliant and extremely generous of you to share your project.

community forum at its best!!

 

[nayr]

im not making any more release forecasts, the life is too unpredictable right now.. I have a big chunk of time this weekend set aside to work on it.

arri, its not functional yet.. Ive got a bunch of unchecked in code but I have to rewrite it all.. there has not been a release yet.

 

[bob2701]

@nayr, can you explain how to add your "omxplayer-dist.zip" file to a working version of rpisurv to stop the tearing? Not sure where to put it on the RPI to unzip.

 

[nayr]

sudo unzip omxplayer-dist.zip -d /

 

[bob2701]

sudo unzip omxplayer-dist.zip -d /

Does it matter where the file is before unzipping?

 

[nayr]

no that will put it in the right spot, root

 

[bob2701]

Thank you, I'll give it a try later this evening.

 

[bob2701]

@nayr, making any progress with this project?

 

[cball]

@nayr, making any progress with this project?

I think @nayr is busy doing his other exiting LPR project.
@nayr: Can you give a statement on what is missing.
Maybe you want to upload the latest version, so others can help you finish this awesome project that many people are waiting for, earlier.
A lot of people would go for a public beta as well.

 

[nayr]

yeah I turned my focus to the LPR project.. but now I need to go back to code mode, for both projects, its not a mental state I can just stay in.. I neglect just about everything when I switch my brain to code, if you dont speak code I loose the ability to communicate with you, I become the machine.. so I can only do it every once and a while if I wish to keep married and employed.. this first round of programming nearly cost me both, but I had just lost my grandfather so I had some bereavement time to burn

this will get finished.. Ive determined my shitty f'n monitor is to blame for alot of my issues and why I stalled out.. so I have to acquire a new one, its totally freaking out and refusing to display telling me I am not using the correct resolution.. when I am, and plugging it into a nother monitor seems to work fine.. it's not tolerating something I am doing and Ive nearly pulled my hair out trying to reason with it.. on a whim I plugged it into another display and it worked fine, talk about maddening.. im ready to toss this POS in the trash.

 

[bob2701]

@nayr, sorry to hear you lost your grandfather, we can wait. I have it working fairly well with rpisurv so no big deal.

 

[nayr]

thanks, i really wanted to get the project finished when I had the window of time off, everyone leaving me alone, and the mental desire to focus on something so fully that I shut out the rest of the world.. so I was cranking out code at a rate thats rarely seen out of me.. but hit a roadblock (my monitor) and could not see how to get around it at the time.

then the ALPR camera came in, and Ive got alot more actual money wrapped up in that project (about $400 now) so I couldent let it sit there and languish either.. but I am happy to report its pretty much done and working great, the only thing that I can do at this point to make it any better is get back to programming.

Just turned 34 last week, spent alot of time recently thinking about the decades past.. Its been 25 years since I got my own computer, and programming was the first thing I wanted to learn.. now here I am with an audience begging me to get off my ass and get back to work, damn time flies..

I dedicated this entire project to Gramps, he was the only person I knew who had a video camera growing up.. big honking VHS shoulder rig, and he loved letting me run wild with it, I even got to take it home and keep it eventually.

 

[japjoe7]

With this setup is is it possible to do remote viewing?

 

[nayr]

not yet, but it will eventually.. thanks to the recent hard work of this project: https://github.com/SpecForge/html5_rtsp_player

it is now possible to stream a rtsp feed to a browser natively.. but I have to write a websocket proxy because they have not open sourced that component.. so the work load will be high to accomplish it.

 

[cball]

@nayr Thanks for sharing all your thoughts.
I think I know what you are planning.
Use this rtsp player to even display the previews in config website.
This is indeed a smart idea, because it gives the opportunity to use a browser to display the Screen using a Rasbian as server!
Nevertheless I would put this and the enerysavings into version 2 and publish a version 1 with what you have developed so far. And we can do the testing for you.
Nobody espects a version 1 with all thinkable features.
Small steps are sometimes smarter!

 

[neilyboy]

I for one want to again say thank you for all the work and time you have put into this project!! I can not wait to have this up and running on a few spare monitors around the house. Keep up the good work bud!
/edit.. anyone in this thread pick-up a pine64 board via kickstarter? I snagged one which came in the mail the other day. I have yet to open it but it outputs 4k hdmi.

Neil