Small camera display project, looking for ideas/advice

[fbnoise]

I made a picture frame and put an unused HP Stream 7 tablet running Win10 in it (see pics) to show a couple of cameras via bp2008's remote live view page. I love that it's touch screen (tap to full screen a cam) and love the small size. The tablet only has wireless Internets, so as expected, bp2008's viewer loses the feed quite often. Also, anytime BI is restarted, the viewer goes dark and I have to reload the page. I expected these problems but it was fun to set up.

So, where I'm at now: fun project with stuff lying around the house that I didn't expect to work perfectly now has me wanting it to work. Love the size, the look, touchscreen, and in general being able to glance over at cameras in the living room.

I thought about just finding a $100 7" display and doing HDMI over ethernet to show the Blue Iris server feed.. That would be super solid, but I'd lose touchscreen, and I had trouble finding anything 7" or so under $100 besides Raspberry pi displays (not sure if those would even work).

I'm also considering purchasing this to make the tablet wired: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OVDE0GC
But making the tablet wired wouldn't solve the problem of the web viewer not reconnecting after BI restarts.

Any ideas or advice would be most appreciated!

 

[gmaster1]

Okay that USB dock thing is way too expensive. Micro/Std USB --> LAN costs about $2USD so factor that when considering options. You don't need a whole desktop "dock" unit.

I use 10" Windows 10 tablets that cost about 90-120USD depending on the sale. They have one full USB port in addition to the micro charging, micro HDMI out, etc. I find it's just easier as you are doing to have it all in-house as opposed to monitors and workstations/clients etc. Keep it simple.

On that note, the least simple thing to do is use the BI ActiveX client 24/7 because of what you mentioned. I got around this by making a simple HTML file that refreshes itself every 60 seconds and it pulls the JPG feed as opposed to the ActiveX feed. I created a cam in BI that is one of my quad views... why do this? Because simply calling to the path of the camera group makes bandwidth multiply over wireless. The smaller single quad view stream is perfect resolution for a sub 20" screen and pulls about 5-6FPS I'd say.

You may think 60 seconds refresh is a lot or that you would notice the refresh. The answer is it's not noticeable at all. Very clean.

 

[fbnoise]

Thanks a lot for the ideas. Love the idea of the 60 sec refresh. That wouldn't bother me a bit.

There are 2 ports on this tablet: USB and micro HDMI

Whoops, scratch that. One USB port. That's all this tablet has. I guess that's what led me to that expensive dock thingy because it can charge and deliver ethernet over one USB connection.

 

[gmaster1]

I use wireless for my displays and switches -- works really well. The timeouts that you're experiencing would go away with that self healing refresh script. Even if I'm watching a monitor during the refresh I barely notice it. Just keep the USB running power and you'll be fine

 

[nayr]

fraction of the cost: https://www.amazon.com/Micro-Cable-Power-Samsung-AtomicMarket/dp/B009YPYORM

then use a normal usb to ethernet adapter.

 

[fbnoise]

@gmaster
This is awesome. I just now added a refresh line of code. Tested a Blue Iris restart and it's working great. Such a simple fix. I'm not a coder - maybe it's not possible, but it seems like these viewer pages should have some lines in there to poll for a connection and then initiate a refresh if it doesn't have one.

@nayr
thanks a lot for the link but it says in the product description it can't charge and transmit data on the same port. Stinkin tablet only has 1 USB port but hey I got it for practically nothing

 

[nayr]

yeah it can as long as your charger leaves the data pins floating.. if it shorts em out then no it wont.

 

[fbnoise]

Hey gmaster1, you mentioned you "created a cam in BI that is one of my quad views". I can't seem to find how to do that (maybe I'm not using the right search terms). Is there info on this forum about that by chance?

The reason I'm interested is because of the wasted pixel space in the viewer, hoping it could help that.. Huge margins around the cameras and with a 7" display, every pixel counts. Wish I could stretch the cameras to fill all the black space, even if it'd distort them a bit.

 

[gmaster1]

@nayr those Y cables rarely work with Windows tablets. The charging (input voltage) threshold is usually just compromised enough. I have a box of various Y adapter models and tested against the 50 million different R&D tablets I have at my office.

fbnoise the quad view works like this for me: New cam setup --> "Generic" as model, raw h264, and path is "/h264/[GROUP NAME HERE]". The "camera" ip address will be a loopback to your BI server so put your Bi's IP in there with port and user/pass etc. You may need to be on the simple authentication web server setting in the web server tab of BI.

Again I strongly recommend this method if you're pulling a JPG stream as opposed to the ActiveX. If you're using ActiveX, you won't need it as much.

Ideally your tablet's browser (firefox, chrome,etc) will be full screen and your HTML page will be a simple one that says "refresh me every 60 seconds" and a 100% screen fill of the video feed. No need for any pixel to go unused on the entire screen.

 

[nayr]

oh, i had no idea there was such thing as a Windows tablet.. hah.. i see your point.

 

[gmaster1]

If you ever want one for $20 just let me know. haha

 

[fbnoise]

Ok, thanks a lot for that info.

The browser is full screen, but there are margins around the left and right sides of the cameras (at the moment I'm choosing to display an odd number of cameras which doesn't help).. I took a screenshot - see all the black space. Doubt there is any way I can stretch things to fit but it's not that big of a deal. My day has already been made with the refresh fix. REALLY appreciate it!

 

[gmaster1]

yay!

But yeah that gap there is due to BI's handling of an odd number of cameras or cams that have different ratios etc. You could always fill the third one with a fake cam that displays info. Some people around here do that kinda thing. They add a "1080p" cam (Solid color 1900x1080 JPG photo as source) and overlay it with updating text of whatever. OR BUY MORE CAMS ALREADY :-D

 

[fbnoise]

I like the idea of using a fake info cam to display something to fill some space. HAHA, I have more cameras than I should but wanted this display super simple - only show what's going on out front and on the porch.

Funny story, had a relative briefly confuse this display for a picture of her car in my driveway. It was full screened on the driveway at the time. She said she thought "why in the hell does he have a picture of my car?". I guess the photo frame look helps it to blend in which is what I had hoped for.

 

[avi6581]

I just use an old android phone. Uses the bi android app. Works seamlessly. Deals fine with any flaky wifi. Has been running for over a year with a display split to show 4 cameras in a bi group. Triggered camera goes full screen when motion detected. Works great. This one just has a few of my cams to give me an overview of what's going on outside. Have others set up in the same way for different cameras on an old galaxy tab.

 

[fbnoise]

Nice! That's a smart spot for a small display. Where mine is, it needs to be a bit larger to make out basic stuff without being close to it. I wish BI had an official (lean) windows viewer. I would use the heck out of it in several places.

 

[brad2388]

View attachment 14050
If you ever want one for $20 just let me know. haha

Sold! Ill take some


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bp2008]

The tablet only has wireless Internets, so as expected, bp2008's viewer loses the feed quite often. Also, anytime BI is restarted, the viewer goes dark and I have to reload the page. I expected these problems but it was fun to set up.

You were using UI2, correct? These things shouldn't be happening. I designed it to self-recover from connection failures and loss of session (your session is lost when Blue Iris restarts). I'd love to know what is causing these problems, because once in a while I hear about them happening but have not been able to reproduce it myself.

 

[bp2008]

I wish BI had an official (lean) windows viewer. I would use the heck out of it in several places.

There are a few unofficial options you may not have tried.

I wrote a simple one in java which is only capable of live view, but it is more responsive than a web page when you are switching between cameras, and it also has the unique ability to let you seek back in time a few minutes if you have enabled the "Instant Replay" option. I use this on my wall mounted tablet at my front door to great effect. I just updated this to be a little better at recovering from session loss, too. https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/191-Standalone-Java-app-for-dedicated-live-view-with-Instant-Replay

There is another one written by someone else, which is a native Windows 8/10 app. It is more fully featured, though I have never tried it myself so I cannot comment on its performance: http://www.blueiriscompanion.com/

 

[bp2008]

There is another one written by someone else, which is a native Windows 8/10 app. It is more fully featured, though I have never tried it myself so I cannot comment on its performance: http://www.blueiriscompanion.com/

Okay, you know what, I just tried this app, because it is good to know what else is out there. I'm sorry to the developer, but the performance is abysmal. Truly. I don't know how this manages to make mjpeg video refresh so slowly. Also, no clicking on images in a grid view to fullscreen it, and apparently no clip playback controls. In my opinion, you aren't missing anything if you skip this app. It would at least be better than the jpegpull.htm page if it didn't have such a poor video frame rate.