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Created May 17, 2020 17:25
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How to make a Raspberry Pi an RTSP streamer and how to consume this?
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receipt5.md

RTSP streaming from Raspberry PI

Introduction

This gist describes the necessary software installation steps for a Raspberry PI in order to enable the PI's camera to act as an external camera for the Dragonfly Java application. This gist shows, how to make a Raspberry PI an RTSP streaming server. The resulting feed can then be used as input for the Dragonfly Java app or the Accuware Dragonfly Demo - Calibration Mode server. The RTSP server on the Raspberry PI must be made publicly available, if calibration is a requirement.

Prerequisites

  • Raspberry PI Zero W, 2, 3, 3b, 3b+, 4 with a Raspberry PI-Cam 5 MP or a SainSmart Wide Angle Fish-Eye Cam (recommended).

  • USB cams are not addressed by this gist, even though possible. The configuration of U4VL is slightly different. We don't recommend the use of USB cameras with a Raspberry PI for latency reasons.

  • Raspbian Stretch Lite or

  • Raspbian Buster/Buster Lite

  • Ubiquity Robotics Raspberry PI image. This gist refers to the 2019-06-19 image available here. Basically it is an Ubuntu 16.04 Mate derivate.

  • A recent version of the GStreamer on your Mac or Linux PC (1.14 sufficient, 1.16 recommended). Check the GStreamer documentation, how to install it.

Please note: Although technically possible to use any of the a.m. Raspberry PI devices, we recommend to use at least a Raspberry PI 3B+, since it has sufficient computation power and allows you to use 5GHz Wifi, which is mostly not that crowded.

Before first boot and after having flashed the SD card with the image (e.g. using Etcher):

  • Enable headless SSH by placing an empty ssh file into the boot partition /boot of the SD
  • Enable headless Wifi by placing a wpa_supplicant.conf into the boot partition to the boot partition /boot of the SD. 5GHz Wifi preferred, if possible.
country=<your-two-letter-code>
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
       ssid="<your-ssid>"
       psk="<your-password>"
       key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

On problems with Wifi: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=191061

  • Find the IP of the PI
  • SSH to it

Installations

After having found out the IP of the IP on your network SSH to the PI:

ssh pi@<ip-of-pi>

Initial password is raspberry.

Update and Upgrade

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Configure the PI once you are at console level

sudo raspi-config
  • Change user password. This is from then on your SSH password. Strongly recommended.
  • Interfacing options/Enable camera

Reboot the PI

sudo reboot

SSH to the PI

ssh pi@<ip-of-pi>

Use your changed password now.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-tools
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-good
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-libav

Test your installation. In order to do this run this command on your Pi:

raspivid -t 0 -w 640 -h 480 -fps 48 -b 2000000 -awb tungsten  -o - | gst-launch-1.0 -v fdsrc ! h264parse ! rtph264pay config-interval=1 pt=96 ! gdppay ! tcpserversink host=0.0.0.0 port=5000

If you have installed GStreamer via the DMG file installation package, run this command in a terminal on your Mac:

/Library/Frameworks/GStreamer.framework/Commands/gst-launch-1.0 -v tcpclientsrc host=<your_Pi's_IP> port=5000 ! gdpdepay ! rtph264depay ! avdec_h264 ! videoconvert  ! osxvideosink sync=false

Run this command in a terminal on your Linux PC. The same command works on your Mac, if you have installed GStreamer via brew:

gst-launch-1.0 -v tcpclientsrc host=<your_Pi's_IP> port=5000 ! gdpdepay ! rtph264depay ! avdec_h264 ! videoconvert  ! autovideosink sync=false

You should see a video. This is already H.264, but not RTSP.

So we are going to enable this now. Terminate the raspivid server on your PI by typing CTRL-C.

sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev
sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev

Download gst-rtsp-server from https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/. Should match the installed gstreamer version. This can be checked by

dpkg -l | grep gstreamer

At the time of writing this is 1.14.4 for Buster lite. Please edit the commands below for other versions (i.e. replace all occurrences of 1.14.4 with the code of the version you are using).

wget https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/src/gst-rtsp-server/gst-rtsp-server-1.14.4.tar.xz
tar -xf gst-rtsp-server-1.14.4.tar.xz
cd gst-rtsp-server-1.14.4
./configure
make
sudo make install

Test your setup:

cd examples
./test-launch --gst-debug=3 '( videotestsrc !  x264enc ! rtph264pay name=pay0 pt=96 )'

If you have installed GStreamer via the DMG file installation package, run this command in a terminal on your Mac:

/Library/Frameworks/GStreamer.framework/Commands/gst-launch-1.0 -v rtspsrc location=rtsp://<your_Pi's_IP:8554/test latency=0 buffer-mode=auto ! decodebin ! videoconvert ! osxvideosink sync=false

Run this command in a terminal on your Linux PC. The same command works on your Mac, if you have installed GStreamer via brew:

gst-launch-1.0 -v rtspsrc location=rtsp://<your_Pi's_IP>:8554/test latency=0 buffer-mode=auto ! decodebin ! videoconvert ! autovideosink sync=false

You should see a test video.

Terminate the RTSP server on the PI with CTRL-C.

Now we want to see the camera. For this we use the nice raspivid wrapper gst-rpicamsrc.

cd ~
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/thaytan/gst-rpicamsrc.git

For Raspbian OS

Proceed with

cd gst-rpicamsrc
./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

For Ubiquity Robotics OS

As the time of this writing the Raspbian build procedure does not work on Ubiquity. While compilation and linking is going fine, there is a runtime issue:

mmal: mmal_component_create_core: could not find component 'vc.ril.camera'

The problem has been discussed and resolved here.

The workaround is to use meson and ninja in order to build the camera driver. Since the default version of meson is not sufficient for the build, you need to install meson via the Python3 installer in order to get a more recent meson version.

Proceed with:

cd gst-rpicamsrc
pip3 install --user meson
mkdir build
~/.local/bin/meson --prefix=/usr build
ninja -C build -v
cd build
sudo ninja install

Finally for both OS

Check, if gst-rpicamsrc is installed

gst-inspect-1.0 | grep rpicamsrc

Now for the final test:

cd ../gst-rtsp-server-1.14.4/examples
./test-launch --gst-debug=3 "( rpicamsrc bitrate=8000000 awb-mode=tungsten preview=false ! video/x-h264, width=640, height=480, framerate=30/1 ! h264parse ! rtph264pay name=pay0 pt=96 )"

If it runs, remove --gst-debug=3 and let it run as a deamon by appending & to the command line above.

If you have installed GStreamer via the DMG file installation package, run this command in a terminal on your Mac:

/Library/Frameworks/GStreamer.framework/Commands/gst-launch-1.0 -v rtspsrc location=rtsp://<your_Pi's_IP>:8554/test latency=0 buffer-mode=auto ! decodebin ! videoconvert ! osxvideosink sync=false

Run this command in a terminal on your Linux PC. The same command works on your Mac, if you have installed GStreamer via brew:

gst-launch-1.0 -v rtspsrc location=rtsp://<your_Pi's_IP>:8554/test latency=0 buffer-mode=auto ! decodebin ! videoconvert ! autovideosink sync=false

For more insight into gst-rpicamsrc and possible other parameters as already used above:

https://sparkyflight.wordpress.com/tag/gst-rpicamsrc/

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