How to stream hires camera at VGA resolution and simultaneously capture 4k30 to a file

Eric Katzfey

There is a new module under development that allows you to pipe VGA (640x480) video from the hires camera at 30fps via MPA so that it can be streamed with voxl-streamer using RTSP while simultaneously saving 4k HD video at 30fps encoded as h265 into a file, preferably on the SD card on voxl. This module is now available in beta and will be officially released in upcoming releases of the voxl SDK for voxl, rb5-flight, and voxl 2. The beta package is available using wget https://storage.googleapis.com/modalai_public/modal_packages/archive/voxl-hires-server_0.0.1.ipk. It is meant for use on voxl only and is compatible with voxl platform release 3-3-0-0.5.0-a. In order to use it with voxl-camera-server, reconfigure voxl-camera-server to not use the hires camera. For example, call voxl-configure-cameras and choose option 1 Tracking + Stereo to allow voxl-camera-server to access the tracking and stereo cameras but not the hires camera. Then you can use voxl-hires-server for the hires camera. Use voxl-hires-server -h to see the available options. More documentation will be available upon official release of this new package.

czarsimon

Hi @Eric-Katzfey thanks for this update. I tried installing this on a fresh 3-3-0-0.5.0-a installation but got the following error:

voxl:~$ opkg install voxl-hires-server_0.0.1.ipk
Not selecting voxl-hires-server 0.0.1 due to incompatible architecture.
Unknown package 'voxl-hires-server'.
Collected errors:
 * opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package voxl-hires-server.
voxl:~$

Also is the streaming resolution configurable or is it locked to VGA?

Eric Katzfey

@czarsimon Can you add the line arch arm64 7 to /etc/opkg/arch.conf and try installation again?

Eric Katzfey

@czarsimon All parameters except for the filename are fixed right now. Feel free to modify the source and rebuild to change things. Future versions will allow more things to be configured.

czarsimon

That worked, I'll take a look at the source. Thanks!

Eric Katzfey

There is now an updated version. It is available using wget https://storage.googleapis.com/modalai_public/modal_packages/archive/voxl-hires-server_0.0.2.ipk. This newer version allows configuration of the camera number and the resolution of the video that gets sent to MPA. It also has a new feature to record JPEG snapshots every second. One should choose either video capture or snapshots but not both simultaneously as it will drop frames in the captured video.

Eric Katzfey

Yet another version is now available with wget https://storage.googleapis.com/modalai_public/modal_packages/archive/voxl-hires-server_0.0.3.ipk. This has a couple of new command line configuration options to select video capture / jpeg snapshot resolution and video capture frame rate.

kitkatSG

Hi,
I'm new to QRB5. Can you guide me step-by-step to login the voxl terminal? Now I can ssh or adb to the QRB5 (which I guess is PX4), but not the voxl. Thank you.

Eric Katzfey

@kitkatSG Are you referring to the screen shot from above? That is on a voxl board, not an RB5. That is what you get when logging in via adb. So if you are already in with adb then you are on the RB5. That would not be the PX4 shell.

kitkatSG

@Eric-Katzfey Yes, I referred to the screenshot above. Thank you for clarifying my misunderstanding about QRB5.

sspiller

@Eric-Katzfey said in How to stream hires camera at VGA resolution and simultaneously capture 4k30 to a file:

Yet another version is now available with wget https://storage.googleapis.com/modalai_public/modal_packages/archive/voxl-hires-server_0.0.3.ipk. This has a couple of new command line configuration options to select video capture / jpeg snapshot resolution and video capture frame rate.

Eric, is this new module tied in with any MAVLINK commands that we can send from QGroundControl to turn it on and off or do we have to write a custom program / config file for every combination? Along same lines, does your system support standard MAVLINK camera commands from QGC to take a picture or do we have to write custom code to do that as well?

Eric Katzfey

@sspiller That module is not tied into mavlink at all. There is code available the implements a portion of the mavlink camera protocol here: https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/utilities/mavlink-camera-manager/-/tree/add-snapshot-mode. Both of these modules are place holders until a full implementation of snapshots and video recording is available. It is something we are working on but we cannot offer a timeline on availability right now.

czarsimon

Hi @Eric-Katzfey is it possible to use the voxl-hires-server project with the tracking/stereo cameras? The default configuration doesn't seem to work. Thank you

Eric Katzfey

@czarsimon Yes, it should be possible. But there are probably hard coded parameters in the code that make it only work with the hires camera right now. That code has been archived but is still available here: https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-hires-server