ModalAI Forum

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.

@Kessie Excellent, glad to hear you got it working! And thanks for adding the details on what you had to do to the posting!

@JoeC Seems like it is an SD card issue. I was able to recreate the problem when using a SanDisk Extreme 32GB card. But when using a SanDisk Ultra 16GB card everything works fine.

@kitkatSG Yes, we have enabled most resolutions in that sensor now and are preparing a release to address this issue.

@Morten-Nissov 1MHz is a supported clock rate for i2c on the DSP based on what I can see in the code. But we have never tried running a device at 1MHz on i2c so it's tough to say why it wouldn't be working for you.

@Hammas-Ali We have not tried either of those streaming protocols. Voxl is a Linux computer so it is likely that you can implement RTMP or DASH. voxl-streamer uses GStreamer so, if there are RTMP or DASH GStreamer elements available, it shouldn't be too hard to incorporate them.

@berayksl Flight logs are in /data/px4/log

An update to UVC camera support has been started. It will increase number of supported cameras by allowing MJPEG and will increase number of supported viewers including latest QGroundControl versions. Target availability is mid-December.

There are a few steps you can take to bring up a new USB camera. First of all, the camera must be UVC compliant. The best thing to do is to test it out on a Linux PC first and verify that it works there. Some tips: 1. Use the 'lsusb' command before and after you plug the camera in to see if it is showing up. 2. If you see the device with 'lsusb', look in /dev to see if it shows up as a /dev/videox device. So, do 'ls /dev/video*' before plugging in the camera and after plugging in the camera to see if it appears. 3. If everything looks good you should be able to stream from it using voxl-streamer.

@Muqing-Cao Here you go: https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-vision-hub/-/blob/dev/src/vio_manager.c?ref_type=heads#L450

@wilkinsaf The configuration file for voxl-streamer is documented here: https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-streamer/#configuration-file-format

No, you shouldn't need anything special to see it with 'lsusb'. If you run 'dmesg -wH' and then plug in the camera do you see any messages printed? Another thing you can try is to free up the adb port by using ssh over wifi instead of adb. Then plug the camera into the adb port and see if you see it with 'lsusb'. It's possible you are seeing a power issue and the adb USB port can deal with more power.

@daniellee Are you using a joystick or an RC transmitter? What do you mean by "the joystick inputs will not read"?

@wilkinsaf The configuration for voxl-camera-server is discussed here: https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-camera-server/#configuration

@Andrew-Tridgell Here is the start of our ModalAI ArduPilot documentation: https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-ardupilot/

@PawelJ Bear with us. Our subject matter experts are out on summer vacation this week.

@wilkinsaf There is an initial version of a new UVC camera server application now available from our "dev" package repo. The application voxl-uvc-server works in conjunction with voxl-streamer to better support UVC cameras. It has been tested with the Logitech C270 and Videology 5MP Micro USB 2.0 Board Camera. The documentation is at https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-uvc-server/ and the code is at https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/modal-pipe-architecture/voxl-uvc-server. To try it out, install the latest Voxl platform release voxl_platform_3-3-0-0.5.0-a. On target, configure the opkg package manager to use the modalai dev repo (https://docs.modalai.com/configure-opkg/). Then use opkg install voxl-streamer to upgrade voxl-streamer from 0.2.6 to 0.2.7 (and libmodal_pipe from 2.1.1 to 2.1.2). Then opkg install voxl-uvc-server to install the new voxl-uvc-server application v0.0.5. Run voxl-uvc-server -d to start the application with debug messages. Then run voxl-streamer with voxl-streamer -f /usr/share/modalai/voxl-streamer/voxl-streamer.conf -c uvc-server to use the new configuration file and record type for the uvc server. Let me know if this works for you.

@Dan It's not really documented anywhere other than the source code. The best place to look is at the muorb module code. That is what implements the uorb communicator interface to allow advertisements, subscription requests, and topic data to flow between the DSP and the Linux side.

@Sam-Kiley When on public 3G / 4G / 5G networks we use a VPN and assign fixed addresses to each system component with our VPN configuration. You should be able to do a similar thing with your 5G private network. Does your private network have a connection to the Internet or is it self contained? I don't know anything about 5G private networks but I'd be surprised if it didn't have a way to assign the same IP address to a device on the network so that you effectively have a static IP. Earlier versions of the RB5 SDK set the MAV_BROADCAST parameter in PX4 to 1 and PX4 would then use the network broadcast address to send out it's initial messages. Any QGC instance running on the network will receive that broadcast and respond so that you get automatic connection. However, this can be problematic if there are more than one instance of QGC running since you may connect to an instance that you don't want. Also, some wireless networks do not support broadcast.

@wilkinsaf There is a new version of libuvc available at http://voxl-packages.modalai.com/dev/libuvc_1.0.2_202112182223.ipk with the changes. If you rebuild the dev branch of voxl-uvc-server and install build deps from dev you should pick up the new libuvc. Then you can rebuild and test with your camera.