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Mavlink Camera Manager not appearing on QGC

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  • Daniel RyuD Daniel Ryu

    @Eric-Katzfey Here is my update regarding the Mavlink Camera Manager. I switched to QGC 3.5.6 (the latest does not in fact work with mavlink camera manager) and I was able to stream one camera using the mavlink camera manager, but only one camera at a time (no dropdown screen). I had all three cameras running simultaneously with voxl-streamer and mavlink-camera-manager, all with different ports and ids. Individually, I could stream each one to QGC, which would only show the first camera service that I would start up and not give me an option for switching to the others.

    Strange behavior: I had all three mavlink-camera-manager services running. I can only see the first camera I start on the QGC screen (lets say its hires, for this example). I then CTRL-C (stop) the mavlink-camera-manager process thats running the hires. However, the hires stream doesn't stop and continues streaming as normal. This continues until I stop all three mavlink-camera-manager services, which is when the QGC then shows a "Waiting for video" screen.

    Screen Shot 2021-09-02 at 3.35.48 PM.png

    When i tried clicking the double boxes in the top left corner, the QGC went into a non-responsive state and I had to force quit QGC.

    Commands I ran and error messages I received

    Screen Shot 2021-09-02 at 3.34.44 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2021-09-02 at 3.34.59 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2021-09-02 at 3.38.02 PM.png

    QGC error message (this was repeated multiple times when running more than one stream, up to 4):
    Screen Shot 2021-09-02 at 3.36.19 PM.png

    Eric KatzfeyE Offline
    Eric KatzfeyE Offline
    Eric Katzfey
    ModalAI Team
    wrote on last edited by
    #9

    @Daniel-Ryu I'm going to have to resurrect my development station to look into this. The mavlink camera manager doesn't actually do any streaming. It's job is to just run the mavlink camera protocol to allow you to easily connect to a stream coming from voxl-streamer (or other application). Can you show the output of the mavlink camera manager application(s) when the debug "-d" option is used? That will show the protocol messages being transferred between the GCS and Voxl.

    Daniel RyuD 1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • Eric KatzfeyE Eric Katzfey

      @Daniel-Ryu I'm going to have to resurrect my development station to look into this. The mavlink camera manager doesn't actually do any streaming. It's job is to just run the mavlink camera protocol to allow you to easily connect to a stream coming from voxl-streamer (or other application). Can you show the output of the mavlink camera manager application(s) when the debug "-d" option is used? That will show the protocol messages being transferred between the GCS and Voxl.

      Daniel RyuD Offline
      Daniel RyuD Offline
      Daniel Ryu
      Regular
      wrote on last edited by Daniel Ryu
      #10

      @Eric-Katzfey

      Hires, stereo, tracking mavlink-camera-manager debug outputs (in this order). All three are running at the same time:
      Screen Shot 2021-09-03 at 12.39.55 PM.png

      Screen Shot 2021-09-03 at 12.40.04 PM.png

      Screen Shot 2021-09-03 at 12.40.13 PM.png

      Voxl-streamer debug output for hires (only hires had updated debug output, other voxl-streamers only had the standard bootup debug)
      Screen Shot 2021-09-03 at 12.40.33 PM.png

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      • Eric KatzfeyE Offline
        Eric KatzfeyE Offline
        Eric Katzfey
        ModalAI Team
        wrote on last edited by
        #11

        Okay, thanks! That shows, at least, a mavlink protocol session has been initiated with the mavlink-camera-manager. The camera protocol is documented here: https://mavlink.io/en/services/camera.html. The mavlink-camera-manager module is implementing a portion of that protocol. When it first connects there should be a flurry of protocol messages going back and forth. Once things are setup then it is just heartbeat messages as you see in the debug output above. So the key part of the debug output is the very beginning.

        Daniel RyuD 1 Reply Last reply
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        • Eric KatzfeyE Eric Katzfey

          Okay, thanks! That shows, at least, a mavlink protocol session has been initiated with the mavlink-camera-manager. The camera protocol is documented here: https://mavlink.io/en/services/camera.html. The mavlink-camera-manager module is implementing a portion of that protocol. When it first connects there should be a flurry of protocol messages going back and forth. Once things are setup then it is just heartbeat messages as you see in the debug output above. So the key part of the debug output is the very beginning.

          Daniel RyuD Offline
          Daniel RyuD Offline
          Daniel Ryu
          Regular
          wrote on last edited by
          #12

          @Eric-Katzfey Where can I go from here then, to be able to swap streams from a dropdown menu in QGC?

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          • Eric KatzfeyE Offline
            Eric KatzfeyE Offline
            Eric Katzfey
            ModalAI Team
            wrote on last edited by
            #13

            Look at the beginning of the debug output from mavlink-camera-manager. Do you see anything besides the heartbeat / ping messages? If so, can you paste that here?

            Daniel RyuD 1 Reply Last reply
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            • Eric KatzfeyE Eric Katzfey

              Look at the beginning of the debug output from mavlink-camera-manager. Do you see anything besides the heartbeat / ping messages? If so, can you paste that here?

              Daniel RyuD Offline
              Daniel RyuD Offline
              Daniel Ryu
              Regular
              wrote on last edited by
              #14

              @Eric-Katzfey

              Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 9.17.48 AM.png

              Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 9.48.55 AM.png

              Screen Shot 2021-09-09 at 9.49.34 AM.png

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              • J Offline
                J Offline
                jaredjohansen
                Regular
                wrote on last edited by
                #15

                @Eric-Katzfey , we got it working. The secret we were missing was our MAV_SYS_ID was not set to 1, which, apparently, is what this capability expects. Thanks!

                Eric KatzfeyE 1 Reply Last reply
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                • J jaredjohansen

                  @Eric-Katzfey , we got it working. The secret we were missing was our MAV_SYS_ID was not set to 1, which, apparently, is what this capability expects. Thanks!

                  Eric KatzfeyE Offline
                  Eric KatzfeyE Offline
                  Eric Katzfey
                  ModalAI Team
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #16

                  @jaredjohansen Great! Glad to hear it!

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                  • wilkinsafW Offline
                    wilkinsafW Offline
                    wilkinsaf
                    ModalAI Team
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #17

                    We are facing a similar issue. Is it correct to say there is not one singular service on VOXL that will automatically stream all cameras to QGC?

                    We have to write our own script for it correct?

                    Daniel RyuD 1 Reply Last reply
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                    • wilkinsafW wilkinsaf

                      We are facing a similar issue. Is it correct to say there is not one singular service on VOXL that will automatically stream all cameras to QGC?

                      We have to write our own script for it correct?

                      Daniel RyuD Offline
                      Daniel RyuD Offline
                      Daniel Ryu
                      Regular
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #18

                      @wilkinsaf Way we handled it was creating our own services/scripts for streaming to QGC automatically with mavlink-camera-manager. Hope it helps

                      wilkinsafW 1 Reply Last reply
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                      • Daniel RyuD Daniel Ryu

                        @wilkinsaf Way we handled it was creating our own services/scripts for streaming to QGC automatically with mavlink-camera-manager. Hope it helps

                        wilkinsafW Offline
                        wilkinsafW Offline
                        wilkinsaf
                        ModalAI Team
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #19

                        @Daniel-Ryu

                        I figured. We just wanted to double check that this was the case. Thank you!

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